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LIBIIARY OF CONGRESS. 



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THROUGH ROME ON: 



A MEMOIR 



OF 



CHRISTIAN AND EXTRA- CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 



BY 

/ 

KATHAITIEL EAMSAT WATERS. 



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NEW YORK: 
CHARLES P. SOMERBY, 

ijg. Eighth Street. 

1877. 






The Library 
OF Congress 

WASHINGTON 



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€ 



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Copyrighted, 18T7, 
By N. K. Waters. 



C. P. Somerby, 

Electrotyper and Printer, 

139, Eighth-st., N. Y. 



THROUGH ROME ON. 

It will be rightly inferred by some readers 
that this book is indebted for the first part of its 
title to the very interesting work by Mr. J. M. 
Capes called '' To Rome and Back," which ap- 
peared a few years ago in England/ Mr. 
Capes's title has indeed suggested mine ; though 
the important differences in our two cases have 
rendered a change of the first word expedient, 
and of the last indispensable. 

This Memoir proceeds from two motives. 
A false position is most painful to me ; and I am 
especially unwilling to pass away and leave my- 
self misunderstood on the grave and important 
subject treated in the following pages. For the 
other motive : I am impelled by a sense of duty 
to bear my testimony to what I conceive to be 
the truth, and thus to answer in my humble way 

1 To Borne and Back. By the Rev. J. M. Capes^ M. A. 
London : Smith, Elder & Co. 1873. 



4: Through Home On. 

to the want wMch I believe many struggling 
spirits are at this moment feeling for the sym- 
pathy and help that a fullow-thinker may afford 
them by such a communication of his own experi- 
ence. Thus, while writing about myself, I am 
writing about what concerns others not less than 
myself: and though but few will read the re- 
cord for the sake of the writer, many, I hope 
and believe, will find their own thought devel- 
oped here with sufficient clearness to lead them 
to forget or forgive the egotistic form necessi- 
tated by my task. To the two motives stated, 
has been joined a feeling as of a duty of media- 
tion upon me, which keeps me straitened until 
it is performed, and which I have tried to per- 
form in the following pages by speaking very 
carefully and at length of Catholic doctrine and 
practice as I have learned them by faithful ex- 
amination and intimate personal experience. 

For the conclusions reached by me and pub- 
lished now to speak for themselves, I will only 
add in this place, that they are the fruit of long, 
diligent and conscientious study ; that they have 
been entertained by me in private, though only 
occasionally expressed to others, for the last 
twenty-five years, in which time they have been 
subjected to the most convincing tests which a 
thoughtful experience of life and a solemn con- 
templation of death have taught me to apply ; 



Through Rome On. 5 

and in fine, that tliej satisfy my understanding, 
cheer my heart, and deserve that I earnestly 
commend them, as I do, to all who are prepared 
for them. 



More than thirty-five years ago I began to 
seek for truth and peace in Religion. It was 
not under the influence of excited feeling that I 
came to this undertaking ; but from a deliberate 
sense of the obligation of mankind to embrace 
the word and system propounded by the Sover- 
eign Creator. I had no doubt that there was 
sucli a Revelation ; and it seemed the most natu- 
ral thing in the world when I was summoned to 
its full acceptance, and the most obvious of duties 
that I should neither refuse nor delay attention 
to the call. But not being " converted," . in the 
emotional sense, I did not leap or tumble at once 
into religious communion ; and not finding my- 
self a ready-made or hereditary church-member 
by the grace of circumstances, I w^as not conven- 
tionally smoothed and ironed into it, as pleasant 
children are, but had, as I have said, to seek it, 
not sparing pains in the search, but striving dili- 
gently to avoid taking a counterfeit for the real- 
ity ; for, as in Samuel's day, while the word of 
the Lord was precious, there was no ojpen vis- 
ion. My search soon showed me that the dog- 



6 Through Rome On, 

matic foundations of Protestant Christianitj rest 
on sand, and brought me to acceptance of the 
Homan Catholic religion as the embodiment of 
Divine Hevelation. I embraced this religion 
without reserve, strove to model myself by its 
teaching and spirit, and submitted every point 
of challenge in my mind to the decision of its 
unquestionable standards. To be a half-way or 
"liberal" Catholic was, I rejoice to remember, 
impossible to me. From first to last, nothing 
was clearer to me than that the liberal principle 
and the ecclesiastical are in vital antagonism ; 
and when the former was demonstrated my 
necessary principle, I gave np the other fairly 
and squarely forever. After eight years in the 
belief and practice of Catholicism, I found myself 
in early manhood arrived by the inevitable work- 
ing of my intellectual and moral constitution at 
the rejection of the premise of the Infallible 
Oracle, on Vv^hich all dogmatic Christians build 
their systems of faith. From this renunciation 
of the underlying assumption of all the creeds, 
my progress was rapid to the views and state 
of mind set forth in the later pages of this 
volume. There are points of thought which 
draw some minds on with load-stone potency, so 
that the intervening tracts are very quickly tra- 
versed. "With me, Protestant churchism had no 
holding power and could not detain me long ; 



Through Rome, On, 7 

and in like manner. Deism, or, as our present-day- 
deists prefer to call it, Theism, was impossible 
as an abiding liaven for my mind. I could not 
go on many months saying two-and-two without 
seeing the obligation to conclude makes foiiVy 
and being satisfied with it. 



Though a wilful and spoiled child, I was 
nevertheless from my very early years keenly, 
even morbidly, conscientious. I had an intense 
appreciation of the difference between eight and 
WRONG, and of the obligation to be right and to 
do right. Owing to the exceeding delicacy and 
acuteness of my nervous sensibilities, I was pe- 
culiarly sensitive to pain and to pleasure alike, 
and sympathised readily with those emotions in 
others. I had a tender compassion for the suf- 
ferings of living creatures below man ; particu- 
larly for the portion of those sufferings inflicted 
by the cruelty of man, which I regarded wdth a 
burning indignation and desire to redress the 
WTong. I distinctly remember that I was imbued 
with a strong sense of justice and an appreciation 
of the Golden Kule. I may say that I received 
no ecclesiastical training ; for though my parents 
were Episcopalians, they were not of the stricter 
sort, and I was only baptised in infancy, and 
taught to believe in God, and to pray, when old 



8 Through Home On. 

enough for that species of instruction ; and ac- 
customed to go to church and to refrain from 
games &c. on Sunday. Some occasional attempts 
were indeed made to teach me the catechism at 
home ; and I think I learned the Apostles' 
Creed and the Decalogue. This was Christian 
discipline in a way ; but it can only in a very 
modified sense be called ecclesiastical. I never 
went to Sunday-school, was not included in a 
confirmation-class, was not even compelled to 
read the Bible, nor to listen to the reading of it 
except in the general church services. My first 
acquaintance with the Golden Hule, as a formula, 
must have been according to its presentment in 
the first and third of the synoptical gospels ; but 
my appreciation of it spoken of awhile ago 
seems to have been instinctive, and independent 
of any external enforcement. This beautiful rule 
of conduct, which we find enunciated by moral 
teachers in various climes long before the rise of 
Christianity, and which, rightly interpreted (it 
is susceptible of a very perverse and mischievous 
interpretation, though its right sense is simple 
and plain enough), is the dictate of a healthy 
conscientiousness always and everywhere, must 
surely have been coeval with the first blendings 
of benevolence and imagination in the forming 
of man's social instincts ; and in these foremost 
files of time, he would be indeed a monster who 



Through Home On. 9 

sliould be born witliout the root of it in him. 
In my childhood's casuistry, wliich I think was 
very true on this point, the application of the 
Golden Rule was not restricted to mutual human 
relations, but was extended to the lower animals, 
that could not be expected to make a return in 
kind ; nor were the comely ones among these 
the favourites of my compassion. I pitied most 
those that suffered most, or that were the most 
persecuted and abandoned ; taking as true pains 
to help a mangy cat, that was detestable to me 
in every light but that of the Golden Rule, as a 
sleek house-pet or a well-groomed pony. Theo- 
dore Parker in his Autobiography records an in- 
cident of his early life in which conscience spoke 
to him with an imperative voice in behalf of a 
helpless little turtle. In reading of this occur- 
rence I have been reminded of a turtle adventure 
of my own childhood, in which conscience as- 
serted its power in a somewhat similar manner, 
and with equally effective result. In a country 
walk with an adult friend and a cousin near my 
own age, I witnessed the capture by my compan- 
ions of an unfortunate testudo that was unsus- 
piciously resting itself by the roadside as we 
came along. The creature was placed in a bas- 
ket carried by one of the party, and sentenced 
to be made a culinary victim on our return to 
the house. Something called off the others and 



10 Through Borne On. 

detained them for a short time, during which I 
was required to take care of the turtle. I did 
"take care" of it, but not according to my 
friends' intention. Tlie capture had grieved me, 
but I had had no hand in that. Now, however, 
I was required to co-operate in distraining the 
captive, and, horrible thought ! in holding it to 
be cooked alive, as I had sometime been told 
was the fate of turtles in the American kitchen; 
a fate which, in my ignorance of comparative 
physiology, I likened to that of a human victim 
at the stake. What was to be done ? Con- 
science told me that I was bound to release the 
turtle, as I should desire and ought to be rescued 
myself in such a case. There was but one thing 
to prevent my obeying the inward voice, but 
that one thing made obedience a matter of no 
small difficulty. I stood in great awe and fear 
of the elder of my two companions, and dreaded 
to displease him by letting the turtle go. This 
contravening sentiment caused a lengthened 
struggle in my mind, in which conscience finally 
prevailed through the force of the consideration 
that what would befall the turtle if I did not quickly 
free it was so much more terrible than anything 
that could happen to me if I did. Acting under 
the law of my being, I overturned the basket ; 
and the turtle, acting under the law of its being, 
lost no time in making its escape. The little 



Through Home On, 11 

incident here related bears, I tliink, a dialectic 
relation to the course my mind afterwards took 
on the subject of religion, and may serve to show 
how natural and inevitable that course was. In- 
tellect and conscience always worked together 
in me, helping each other and controlling the 
will in spite of adverse circumstances. The 
force of example was apparently less powerful 
than it commonly is in childhood. My comrades 
were neither more nor less cruel than boys in 
general. My father, though a man of great and 
tender humanity, was 3^et so imder the dominion 
of habits characteristic of his class and constitu- 
tion, as to take delight in fox-hunting, shooting, 
and racing ; so that my early recollections are 
full of whips, spurs, and fowling-pieces, along 
with hounds, pointers, and blood horses. But 
though I played sometimes with the slain fox's 
brush, and handled with a mournful curiosity 
the stiffened relics of a once innocent and light- 
some life that were brought in at the close of 
mahy a day's sport, I never learned to forget 
the bond between man and the underlings with 
sensibilities that are akin to his, and that appeal 
to his justice, his kindness, and the dignity of 
his higher nature, not to seek his pleasure in 
what is agony to them. It increases the hold 
which my father's memory has on my veneration 
and affection, that he was always indulgent 



12 Through Home On. 

towards tlie compassionate feelings I describe, 
strange and troublesome as they were in a boy, 
and so at variance "with the impulses springing 
from his own robust organisation ; and that, so 
far from treating them with rebuke or scorn, he 
seemed even to sympathise with their manifesta- 
tion. It was impossible to me then to overlook 
the other side^ in this matter of sports, or to sat- 
isfy my mind by following the example of peo- 
ple around me ; and just so, when the question 
of religion came up for my decision, it was im- 
possible for me to pin my faith upon the sleeve 
of any other person, or to be satisfied with any- 
thing less than the intelligent approval of jnj 
own judgment and conscience. 



It was perhaps a prognostic of the future 
free-thinker, that my mind was agitated at this 
immature period with crude polemic thoughts 
excited by what seemed to me the contradictory 
preachings from the same pulpit of Faith with- 
out "Works and the importance of such " works ^' 
as keeping Sunday after a certain imperfect fol- 
lowing of the Puritan model. The clergyman 
I am thinking of condemned even the opening 
of a letter on Sunday ; and the incongrnity be- 
tween the morning and tlie evening preaching, 
as I may describe it, vexed my soul. The dis- 



Through Hume On. 13 

ingenuousness of the prevailing Sabbatarian 
teacliing about Sunday, wliich pretends to a 
Scriptural foundation for this church festival 
such as all persons well acquainted with the 
Eible know does not exist, and which is thought 
to be doing God service when it abuses the ten- 
der faith of childhood by sedulously moulding 
it in the false impression, became known to me 
some years afterwards, and awakened a lively 
indignation at the shamelessness of the pious 
fraud : but at the time I am describing, my eyes 
had not been opened on this point, and it was 
the discrepancy between the solifidian doctrine 
of the rector in one breath, and his insistence 
upon the necessity of works in another, that dis- 
turbed my peace. It was as if those ancient 
rivals James and Paul inspired the preacher by 
turns ; only James, with all his zeal for works, 
could hardly have strayed from the apostolic 
track so far as to prompt the making of a new- 
fangled Sabbath out of Sunday. This little 
stumbling-block was but a trifle at the time ; 
though w^ien I became acquainted with the 
Catholic doctrine a few years later, it was no 
small relief to recognise the comparative reason- 
ableness of the estimation set by Mother Church 
on good works; which she does not stigmatise, 
as Ano-licanism in Eno^land and America ex- 
pressly does in one of its Articles of Heligion ; 



1-J: Through Rome On. , 

Lut wliicli slie allows to have human merit in 
unsanctified cases, and when tliey are snpernatu- 
ralised bj Divine grace, assigns them a share in 
justification along with faith. Without being 
Tinder compulsion in the matter, I obtained by 
degrees a considerable acquaintance, for one so 
young, with the text of the common English 
Bible, and availed myself of it with singular in- 
dependence as armour, as weapon, and as play- 
thing, by turns. A brass figure which I had 
pounced upon in a lumber-room at the top of 
the house was set up, secretly and very timidly 
at first, to represent Jehovah or Shaddai ;^ and 
the Lion of the Tribe of Judah was personified, 
if I may so speak, by a wooden image of grave 
leonine aspect, which seemed competent for any 
needful miracle of speech or transformation. 
The Israelites performed in those days prodigies 
of valour, under my auspices, against the people 
in possession of the Promised Land, and spilt 
much blood whicli required no wiping up after- 
wards. I was bold enough to cap scripture with 
my seniors in my own defence ; and an amusing 
recollection comes over me at this moment of 
the dismay depicted in the countenance of an 
elderly kinswoman who upon an occasion of 
frowardness had interposed with a reminder of 

1 1 think Bunyan furnished me with the name Shaddai. 



Through Borne On. 16 

the ravens and young eagles in Prov. xxx. IT, 
when I turned upon her with Eph. vi. 4, w^hich 
I doubted not was a wholesome admon'tion to 
children's elders, and which was at any rate ef- 
fectual to bring about a drawn battle on the 
particular occasion. I was a great reader. A 
vivid remembrance remains of one favourite book, 
an illustrated copy of Bunyan's Holy War, with 
its grand old hero Dlabolus, rearing himself, to 
my infinite admiration, against the Tower of 
Mansoul. I do not know how many times a 
day I scanned this fearful picture, nor how many 
crumbs of ginger bread I let fall upon it and the 
adjoining page ; but there is a close association 
of ginger-bread and Diabolus in my memory to 
this moment. I had a curious fancy for tran- 
scribing Siemens Sermons. Another crony was 
Barclay's Apology, a noble book which I learneTi 
to appreciate at a later period. I am disposed 
to date my acquaintance with Fielding's Tom 
(Tones and Amelia, and several of the Waverley 
series, before my reading of either the Arabian 
Wights or Rohinson Crusoe. It does not seem 
to me that this early introduction to the novel 
was attended with any bad effect. There is a 
kernel of English heartiness in Fielding, which 
my mind tasted, I think, without any of the 
grossness of his age entering with it; and as to 
Scott, — who at any time of life was ever hurt by 



16 Through Rome On, 

him ? When in the ripeness of my years I vis- 
ited the land wliich he was the one to redeem 
from the reproach of savage wildness, and to 
make beautiful in history, in fiction, and in song, 
its scenes were already dear to me, and were 
peopled with a host of old acquaintances whom 
I might, " without all offence of necromancy," 
as that appreciative reader Bishop Joseph Hall 
phrases it, call up to give me a welcome in their 
haunts and homes. Smollett's novels, which are 
very gross, and, with all their merits, and what- 
ever some critics may say, much inferior to 
Fielding's, I did not read till some years later, 
indeed, except Roderick Random^ not until I 
was grown. I made acquaintance now, how- 
ever, with Le Sage in Gil Bias and The Devil 
ujpon Two Sticks. The Arabian Niglits I 
read again and again. Surely the child is much 
to be pitied who from any cause cannot enjoy 
this book. My copy was a large one-volume 
edition with many plates; and I have a sore re- 
membrance yet of the borrowing of it by a 
young neighbour who returned it after a long in- 
terval with some of the leaves missing. The 
difficulty of the roc's %^g^ mentioned by Mr. 
Fiske in his Myths and Myth-makers^ was, I 
remember, one of my perplexities. Robinson 
Crusoe was soberly interesting, but never ex- 
cited my enthusiasm. I had a Friday of my 



Through Home On. 17 

own in a very black lad, mj special attendant ; 
but we were sadly in want of additional savages, 
and Friday liad no cannibal propensities for me 
to correct, but displayed a most Christian appe- 
tite for beef-steak, and, in common with his mas- 
ter, was compelled by domestic tyranny to wear 
civilised jacket and trousers. From eight to ten 
I imbibed Peter Parley. Near eleven, perhaps, 
a strong taste for ghosts was developed in me. 
To this era belong Mrs. Ratcliffe's romances and 
The Three Sjpaniards. There were no such 
superlative ghosts then as we have now. How 
I should have revelled in The Wanderer^ The 
Haunters and the Haunted^ A Strange Story, 
and the collections of Mrs. Crowe and Mr. 
Robert Dale Owen ! Zanoni did come in while 
my taste was yet fresh. I was strongly moved 
by Walpole's Castle of Otranto^ and in a less 
degree by some of the Ettrick Shepherd's stories. 
At twelve, James's String of Pearls and Ir- 
ving's Alhambra were meet successors to the 
Arabian Nights. About the same time, I was 
fascinated by Kennedy's fine American novel 
Horse-shoe Rohinson. Mr. Kennedy was a 
fj'iend of my father's, and was regarded by me 
with a kind of fearful interest as the creator of 
such wonderful beings as Horse-shoe and Arthur 
Butler. I read and enjoyed Maria Edgeworth, 
too ; a writer unhappily little known to young 



18 Through Rome On, 

people of the present day, and whom I am glad 
to see mentioned as she is in Dr. Hill's True 
Order of Studies. At thirteen I received the 
greatest impulse in my juvenile career of reading 
and thinking ; of which I shall come to speak 
presently. I have specified only a small part of 
my childhood's reading ; but I will not pass from 
this period without recurring to a circumstance 
belonging to it which grew out of a certain dra- 
matic cast in my imagination, and which has 
been exemplified in connexion with my Bible 
reading on a previous page. What I found in 
books, or was particularly struck with in real 
life, often so impressed me as to be acted out, 
with very ample variations of my own, by means 
of a large collection of broken toys which at 
odd times and seasons I had gathered round me. 
I was another Wilhelm Meister with my pup- 
pets. There were men, women, children, and 
lower animals, with their proper names; the 
dogs being terrible fellows in a fight, and the 
horses 'and cows having regular appraisements 
in their character of personal property. One of 
the horses, I remember, died of old age ; and 
another, a notably fractious bay, that used to be 
driven about by a pliysician of vast practice, 
which he managed to attend to in spite of the 
loss of his legs, arms, and head, ran off one day 
with the empty gig, and committed suicide by 



Through Borne On. 19 

breaking his neck against a lamp-post. It was a 
very tolerable rendering of tlie scenes of life, 
wlietlier as drawn by authors, or as acted on the 
stage of the wide, wide world. Among other 
fidelities, one man in his time played many parts. 
Thus I can distinctly recall Dominie Sampson 
in the shape of a long green man, one of the 
crew of a l^oah's Ark wrecked on my table- 
lands ; who also did duty on proper occasions as 
a right reverend bishop. Harry-of-the-Wynd 
entered into the body of a broken spool, which 
after shuffling off its mortal coil had gone 
through the Revolutionary War as General 
Marion. A chess rook, forsaking his bed and 
board, became first Sir William Wallace, after- 
wards Hobert Bruce, and at last sunk into a 
member of Congress, and kept house with his 
wife at Washington. If " all the world '& a 
stage," these walking gentlemen of mine, that 
had their exits and their entrances, that loved, 
and fought, and pranked themselves in wooden 
imitation of their betters, were surely not the 
most despicable players on the boards. I vow I 
have more respect for them to this hour than for 
many living people I have met. Through my 
childhood I lived in the faith of a golden age. 
Earth, as well as heaven, was transfigured to my 
eyes ; and millennial blessedness was the dream 
of my nights and days. 



20 Through Rome On. 

Witli my miscellaneous reading after thir- 
teen this book lias nothing to do. I will only 
observe that I did not take up Shakspeare till I 
was sevente2n ; when I made a regular winter 
campaign on that field, with the time-honoured 
text of Johnson and Steevens. The preceding 
memorials of my early years have been written 
as much in the way of a natural proem to the 
main design of my work, indicating the type of 
my mind, and showing how I proceeded along 
the paths of reading and thinking without much 
leading from the first ; as from an inclination to 
conjure up the past, and to make out of its 
materials a peace-offering for some of my 
readers. 



The Eev. G W ■ succeeded Dr. Mc- 

I as rector of St. Anne's parish, Annapolis, Md., 

in the summer or autumn of 1841, a short time 
after the death of my father, when I was thirteen 

3^oars of age. At our first interview Mr. W 

invited me to visit him and look over his collec- 
tion of shells. I did not fail to make the visit ; 
and after showing me the shells the clergyman 
proceeded to do wdiat he no doubt considered 
his parochial duty, by admonishing me as to re- 
ligion, and proposing that I should begin wdth 
Lis assistance to prepare myself for confirmation. 



Through Home On. 21 

That I liad not received this rite before was owing 
to my father's unwillingness that I should come 
to it while I was yet, as he thought, too young 
to understand its character and obligation; and 
perhaps tliere was something of my father's 
thought in my mind when I said in reply to Mr. 
"W 's suggestion, that I was not willing to pro- 
fess Episcopalianism without an intelligent con- 
viction of the superiority of its claims to those of 

other communions. Mr. W observed, that 

my being confirmed would not put it out of my 
power to adopt a different form of religion after- 
wards, if I should think it right to do so : but I 
rejoined, that I would much rather take pains at 
first in choosing my religion, than take this step 
ignorantly, and risk having to change afterwards. 
So the worthy rector, who w^as much too sensible 
and fair to deny the justness of my position, had 
to go to work to show me how Episcopalianism 
stands in relation to other forms of Christianity, 
as he could not induce me to profess it without 
this instruction. Thus I was a tough young 
Christian from the start : yet I was an inchoate 
Christian ; that is, I had been baptised in my in- 
fancy, I took it for granted that Christianity is 
true, and in some one of its folds of doctrine and 
worship of binding obligation ; and I only 
sought to find which fold it was my duty to enter ; 
for I held, as it were instinctively, that there is 



22 Through Borne On. 

an essential and irreversible distinction between 
tlie TKUE and the untrue ; that of contradictions 
only one can be true, and hence, that among the 
contradictory sects all but one must be wrong, 
and that one I was bound, for God's sake and 
for the sake of my own soul, to distinguish from 
the rest and to embrace its system with all hearti- 
ness when it was once proved to me. I did not 
then, and I do not now, see how the theory of a 
supernatural revelation of positive doctrine can 
admit of an innocent diversity of opinion as to 
what the doctrine is, among the people to whom 
it is addressed. God is no trifler, surely ; and 
the work of establishing a religious system on 
earth for the instruction and salvation of men, 
being His work, cannot be so bunglingly done 
as that they for whom it is intended may honestly 
be at fault as to where and w^hat it is. If there 
is no positive doctrine in the case, if He has only 
breathed a spirit of goodness into certain chosen 
vessels, to be diffused through various channels 
among mankind, that indeed is a different affair; 
but that is not dogmatic Christianity. I had lived 
my thirteen years among Orthodox people, and, 
without having been strictly drilled to the tap 
of the " drum ecclesiastick," had imbibed the pre- 
vailing view that the Divine Teacher, Jesus, had 
instituted a visible society, with outward ordi- 
nances of discipline and worship, as well as a pure, 



Through Borne On. 23 

sacrosanct doctrine of ineffable things, all derived 
from him, and guaranteed to last till the end of 
the world. ^ I deemed it now my sacred duty to 
distinguish this rightly constituted society from 
all the pretenders around it, not doubting that 
its divine characteristics would soon present 
themselves to my longing eyes. I made no ques- 
tion of the alleged fact of the Christian revela- 
tion. When I demurred to instant acceptance 

of the church system offered me, Mi*. W asked, 

I remember, if I wished to investigate the truth 
of Christianity, and I made a rather frightened 
reply in the negative. I knew nothing about 
the " evidences "; but I was quite ready to jump 
all that. All my training and associations made 
it a terror to me to be for a moment suspected 
of religious scepticism ; and I do not think that 
I had a moment's doubt that the true church was 
from God and might certainly be found. Be it 
observed, that the horror of doubting, or being 
suspected of doubting, Christianity in the abstract 
did not prevent me from questioning the claims 
of the actual form of concrete Christianity which 
I knew best and for which I had a prepossession. 
If I did not identify abstract Christianity with 
goodness itself, as very likely I did, at least I 
identified it with external propriety and the 

1 Matt, xxviii. 20 ; Eph. iv. 13. 



"24: Through Rome On. 

favour of all whose approbation was valuable to 
me. It will be seen that the constitution of my 
mind inclined to High-churchisni. I could not 
look upon the visible organisation of Christianity 
as a small matter, supposing that organisation to 
have been ordained by God himself. As will 
appear a little farther on, I soon had to abandon 
this supposition of a Divine foundation and 
Apostolical succession of outward Christianity; 
and after this loss of its authoritative character, 
it had less and less hold on my mind, till it re- 
covered tlie full measure at least of its first pres- 
tige under the form of that ancient corporation 
which is the block from which the heresies that 
supplied my first Christian materials are chips 
given to the winds. But at the time now under 
consideration, I was moved, by natural bias, and 
by the kind of leading I was subjected to, in the 
direction of High-church, which insists that there 
really is such a visible body on earth as the 
Epistle to the Ephesians speaks of; established 
and made perpetual by the ascended Lord, to 
endure " till we all come in the unity of the faith 
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
Christ." I saw that something of the kind is 
necessary on the hypothesis of a supernatural 
revelation ; and I was inclined at the outset to 
believe that I should find Episcopalianism the 
pillar and ground of the truth and my proper 



Through Rome On. 25 

nnrsing-motlier in holy things. The dignity and 
beauty of its orders and ritual, its historic name, 
the social respectability of its membership, all 
commended it to me. In addition to these claims, 
it was my childhood's church, the church of my 
parents, the home church of my earliest recollec- 
tions. I was ready to accept whatever its advo- 
cates had to say for it. Mr. W supplied me 

with books to read on the subject to which my 
mind now turned with so ardent an interest. 
The first of these, I think, was Jerram and 
Wall on Baptism^ and the next. Chapman's 
Sermons on the Ministry^ Doctrines^ and Wor- 
ship of the Protestant Ejpiscopal Church, 
After reading for some months, I was quite im- 
bued with the argument for the Three Orders 
and Apostolic Succession. Of coarse the Bible 
made a part of my reading ; and one day I was 
troubled to find Paul talking to Timothy about 
the gift that was in him by virtue, as it seemed, 
of " the laying on of the hands of the presby- 
tery." It may be noted, that my head was so 
full of the doctrine of episcopal ordination that 
I attached no importance to the preceding clause, 
" by prophecy "; which might otherwise have 
proved still more perplexing. I hastened with 

my difficulty to Mr. W , and w^as comforted 

with the information that in the Episcopal Church 
" the presbytery," as well as the bishop, lay their 



26 Through Rome On, 

hands upon the candidate for orders. The fur- 
ther exphination ^vill readilj occur to the reader 
who is a httle better skilled than I was then in 
church terms and hermeneutics. It was a great 
comfort to throw mj bm-den upon the clergyman, 
my faith in whom made up for any want of co- 
gency in the argument he offered. This is com- 
monly the case with immature reasoners who 
have confidence in their guides. It may have been 
weeks, or months, after the Pauline vexation 
when I encountered a bundle of more stubborn 
difficulties, while I was staying in the country, 
and so could not have recourse at once to my 
trusted counsellor. The Presbyterian argument 
which I lighted on in the EncyclopcBdia Bri- 
tannica troubled me greatly, because I could not 
answer it, and it showed me that so much more 
than I had supposed could be said on that side. 
This effect was increased by a perusal of the 
Methodist Bangs' Original Church of Christ ; 
which very much impaired the force of the Epis- 
copalian argument, and almost won me to an 
agreement with the author that the constitution 
of the church was not regarded as a matter of 
much importance by the Bible writers and primi- 
tive Christian authorities. Then the low view 
taken by the Apostle Paul of marriage^ troubled 

' I. Cor. vii. 2, 9, 28, 32, &c. ; I. Tim. v. 11. 



Through Borne On, 27 

me ; on ■wliich I took counsel with a relative 
versed in tlie Scriptures ; who reminded me that 
the Apostle, by his own avowal, did not always 
write by Divine direction, but miugled his own 
judgment with the Lord's in his teaching.^ This 
advice met the occasion ; and I do not believe 
that my adviser had any more thought than I 
myself had at the time, of its bearing on the sub- 
ject of inspiration. Now began a peculiar trial 
to my feelings in the charge brought against me 
by some of my friends, that I was fickle, did not 
know what I believed, &c. They had been glad 
enough to see me interested in religious inquiries 
as long as it seemed likely that I should settle 
beside thera in my conclusions. No doubt it 
would have suited them better if I had not been 
an inqvArer at all, but had taken my religion 
blindly, as they had theirs, without any tu'esome 
and dangerous inspection of the grounds on which 
it rested : still, as boys generally do not take a 
very lively interest in religion, they had been 
glad to see my eyes sparkling in that direction, 
and had been willing I should read a little one- 
sided controversy and ask a few questions, ex- 
pecting to see me presently lie down under the 
horns of the altar in all Christian docility and 
peace. That I did not do so, but persisted, like 

^ I Cor. vii. 6, 10, 13, 25, 36, 40; U Cor. viii. 8, 10. 



28 Through Rome On, 

tlie troublesome fellow in Dickens's novel, 
" wanting to know," sadly displeased them with 
me, and changed their encouraging sympathy 
into the reproach which I have said was a pecu- 
liar trial and was very hard to bear. I do not 
know that I was fickle ; but I do know that I 
was very much in earnest, and that these people 
who taunted me with not knowing what I be- 
lieved never had clearly known what they be- 
lieved themselves. Their steadfastness was will- 
ing stagnation of mind ; and my changing was 
the natural current of healthful activity in a 
mind that could not prefer a still pool to the liv- 
ing waters of truth beyond. "When I saw Mr. 
W again, my dissatisfaction with Episcopalian- 
ism was such as to disgust that gentleman with 
so unmanageable a catechumen ; and though we 
remained on amicable terms, he troubled me no 
more about confirmation, nor I him to help me 
in my search for the true Church; which thence- 
forth showed itself more and more of an ignis 
fatuus in the tenebrous atmosphere of Protest- 
ant variations. If I did not follow the course 
of Moore's " Irish Gentleman in search of a re- 
ligion," it was because a simpler path lay before 
me, which led, however, to the Irish Gentleman's 
bourn all the same. Tlie Whittingham-Johns 
imbroglio presented the Episcopal Church in the 
light of a house divided against itself. Presby- 



Through Home On, 29 

terianlsm, though strong enough to draw the bat- 
tle at least with prelacy, and though very orderly 
and respectable in its organisation and member- 
ship, had not sufficient attraction to win me to 
its side. Its hard commercial way of dealing 
with the Almighty, its lack of warmth of colour- 
ing to my imagination, and the meagreness of its 
apostolic argument, turned me away. The Bap- 
tists were in like manner repulsive to me, not- 
withstanding the antiquity of their distinctive 
rite. The Methodists, and all the Evangelical 
tribe besides that I have not mentioned, seemed 
but mongrel offshoots or imitations of the greater 
bodies that I had already weighed in the balance 
and found wanting. All life and consciousness 
appeared to protest against Quakers and the like. 
The Liberal sects were virtually imknown to me. 
I am inclined to think that Unitarianism, that 
least unreasonable form of Christianity, might 
have given me pause and temporary rest if I had 
been acquainted with it at this time, when I had 
grown so weary and desponding in my quest of 
the true Church, which was the proper sequel of 
the supernatural ministry of Jesus, but against 
which the gates of hell seemed to have prevailed 
so effectually as to have trampled out all trace 
of its foundations and authority. But I did not 
know Unitarianism, save as a name, or as a mon- 
strous heresy which it was something like sin to 



30 Through Rome On. 

think of as a Christian claimant. The Roman 
Catholic Church was another monster, too hor- 
rible and too absurd to call for patient consider- 
ation. There was no true Church, God's own, 
made and sent bj Him, and having therefore a 
divine claim to my allegiance. Then was Chris- 
tianity not what I had believed : yet my early 
education constrained me to cherish the thought 
that it must have the soul of goodness in it some- 
how, and that I ought to squeeze myself into it 
somewhere, for my own sake, if not for the sake 
of God, who really seemed to be very indifferent 
to the result. So I went on, feeling the pangs 
of famine while all were feeding around me. I 
read Duncan's Lectures^ remarkable as the 
wasteful endeavour of a powerful mind to deduce 
a scheme of Moral Government from the first 
chapters of Genesis. This book served to unset- 
tle my faith in the doctrine of the Trinity, which 
as a child I might be excused for having before 
that time held undoubtingly. The discovery 
which I made about the same time, that that an- 
cient symbol known as the Apostles' Creed is 
susceptible of a Unitarian interpretation, is also 
to be noted, as having tended to smooth the 
wrinkled front of heterodoxy to my young eyes. 
I have not spoken of the prayers with which I 
accompanied my unsuccessful search ; but have 
only recorded the workings of my mind through 



Through Rome On. 31 

its " phases of faith " up to this period. Of 
course I prayed, as well as searched the Scrip- 
tures, in mj travail ; the one to as little purpose 
as the other, so far as the immediate pressing ob- 
ject was concerned. Prayer, when it is the out- 
cry of the labouring spii'it, always brings a meas- 
ure of relief, and sometimes, under the laws of 
nature, opens a way to the very thing prayed 
for, though commonly the suppliant has to put 
up with something else. Searching the Scriptures 
is much less efficacious, without a strong fanatical 
fervour in him that makes the search. Be thor- 
oughly persuaded that such-and-such a doctrine 
is contained in the Bible, and you will very likely 
find it there, an din passages whose authors were 
the farthest possible removed from the doctrine : 
but go in a spirit of candid inquiry to this oracle 
of contradictions, and the more you search the 
more confused and hopeless you become. This 
must needs be so, for the Bible is made up of the 
ill-matched compositions of many disagreeing 
writers, who wrote for times and places, as well 
as for mental and moral habitudes, very remote 
from these of ours ; and as to the question of the 
Church in the nineteenth century, it is especially 
at fault, from the notorious fact that the primi- 
tive Christians expected the Last Judgment and 
the consummation of all things to come in their 
own mortal day and generation. 



32 Through Home On. 

A year or more passed over my head. One day, 
I was haviDg a controversial talk with a friend, in 
which the point of Christian union came up. Pro- 
voked by some now forgotten remark of the other 
party, I said, — " Go to the Church of Rome, if 
you want unity and consistency !" It was a hasty 
and sarcastic speech ; but the moment it was ut- 
tered, my heart burned within me, and my words, 
lost upon my companion, sounded back to the 
inner ear of my consciousness like the voice that 
came to Peter as he slumbered on the house-top. 
"What if I had been in blindness all this time 
about the Church of Kome, and instead of a 
monster of corruption, it was God's clean and 
perfect tabernacle, the Church I had sought, and 
sighed for, and despaired of at last ? Might it 
not be so ? At least I was bound to inquire 
further. I did inquire ; all by myself at first, 
with only a few expository works on the Catho- 
lic faith to help me ; later with the aid of some 
personal friends who were Catholics. Before I 
applied to the latter, however, I believe I had 
pretty well satisfied myself from my own reading 
and thinking that I was obliged to be a Catholic ; 
and what I wanted was to feel fresh Christian 
sympathy again, and to be introduced to some 
one who could speak to me with an authority 
that had indeed descended from Christ and the 
Apostles. 'Eq more sham churches for me. I 



Through Home On, 33 

liad done with them, thank Heaven it was so ! 
forever. 



Looking back now, I can see no flaw in the 
argument that led me to the Cathohc Church, 
assuming tlie premises, common to all super- 
naturalist Cliristians, with which I started. No 
doubt tliere was, as in all such cases, much be- 
sides logic and pm-e love of truth that influenced 
my conversion ; but the argument itself seems 

to me irrefrao:able. An oracular reliojion de- 
cs o 

mands permanent infallibility, along with indis- 
putable clearness and authority, in its oracle. 
These attributes it is obvious do not belong to 
Protestantism, taken as a whole or in any of its 
parts ; but on the contrary, the denial of them is 
fundamentally necessary to justify the Reforma- 
tion, and is contained in tlie assertion of the 
Right of Private Judgment, the ultimate mean- 
ing of which is individuality, supremacy of the 
individual mind and conscience. The history 
of Protestantism does indeed show attempts to 
qualify the assertion of the Bight, and to restrict 
its exercise by one or another kind of external 
authority; as in the supplanting of Papal by 
Royal supremacy in England ; in the setting up 
of the Church of the early ages as a substitute 
for the Church of all ages; in the every-day 



34: Through Home On, 

domination of sects and teachers; and most 
strikingly, in investing the vohime called the 
Bible with an idolatrous veneration and authority 
over the human mind. These attempts, how- 
ever, have all proved as illusory in their results 
as in the inconsequent theories wdth which they 
started. Unless the Church be divinely and in- 
fallibly constituted, any claim by it to restrict 
private judgment by determining doctrine and 
ruling conscience is arrogant, and voidable on 
every ground that will sustain the Keformation. 
Thus High-church Protestantism fails through 
the insufficiency of the human authority that it 
would clothe with divine prerogatives ; and the 
same argument, further applied, is not less con- 
clusive against the Evangelical theory. The fu- 
tility of claiming any kind of supernatural au- 
thority for an obscure and voiceless Book, whose 
contents are the stories and moralisings of an- 
tiquity, and whose vouchers are the opinions, the 
votes, and the passive consent, of confessedly 
fallible men, is as clear as that which attached 
to the system of the old heathen auguries, of 
which it was said that the meeting of two augurs 
was an occasion for laughter. Of course I do 
not mean to say that the whole dialectical aspect 
of the case was taken in by me at the age of 
fourteen or fifteen. What I do mean to say is, 
that the steadfast direction of my conscience and 



Through Borne On. 35 

intellect at that period in quest of the divine 
Oracle carried me inevitably out of Protestant- 
ism, which was proved to be destitute of the 
Oracle, having only a misleading name and 
dumb fetich in its place ; and landed me as in- 
evitably in Catholicism, where alone the order 
and facts are in apparent fulfilment of the Chris- 
tian premises. The argument, which I had a 
pretty firm grasp of then, and which is as clear 
as lightning to me since, is, I repeat, without a 
flaw, once granted the premises from which it 
proceeds. Those premises necessitate in logic 
some such organisation as tlie Catholic Church. 
On the other hand, the Protestant principle 
issues in individual sovereignty; and in the 
presence of individual sovereignty there can be 
no supreme Teacher of an objective revelation. 
Dogmatic Protestantism is, therefore, an egre- 
gious failure. A living intelligible authority is 
necessary in the Teacher's place. This is sup- 
plied to Protestants, inconsistently with their 
avowed principle, by their clergy and elders ; 
who themselves derive the doctrine they teach 
from tradition rather than from the Bible, though 
they often exercise a marvellous industry and in- 
genuity in torturing the sacred text to fit it to 
their tradition. Each sect or congregation keeps 
its bottled mixture of traditionalised-Bible-doc- 
trine, which is given and taken in solemn doses 



36 Through Borne On, 

as the medicine of everlasting life. So it hap- 
pens that the children of Episcopalians are 
usually Episcopalians, those of Presbyterians 
Presbyterians, &c. The Bible is the Protestant 
idol ; but as with other idolatries, the idol's hier- 
ophants are the real teachers. In general, the 
disciple finds himself placed by nature and cir- 
cumstances in some particular division, say the 
Episcopalian fold, or the Methodist fold ; and he 
quietly takes for granted that the hieropliants of 
that particular division are right, and swears by 
them with all docility. I was not able to do 
this, but by the constitution of my mind was 
obliged to recognise the force of objections. 
The conflict of equal authorities under the ne- 
cessity of personal teaching, and this pressing 
question of the one essential religion, forced me 
to abandon the Protestant principle, as I did not 
then suspect the unsoundness of the oracular 
premises with wliich I found it in unnatural alli- 
ance. I had constantly admitted the authority 
of the Bible, but could get no clear light from 
it on the constitution and doctrines of the one 
true religion. Seeing the doctors in hopeless 
disagreement, and the Bible made to support the 
contradictory teachings of them all, I turned in 
my starvation away from the Protestant board, 
that was spread with stones instead of bread, 
and found saving hospitality in the grand old 



Through Ito'tne On. 37 

household of faith that had succoured millions 
of wanderers before I came. 



Let me here review the ground just gone 
over, and amplify some of the points I have 
stated. I started with Christian premises at 
thirteen. Following the traditional element, 
under the impulse of my religiosity, I was a 
Roman Catholic at fifteen. Looking back now 
that I have arrived at middle age, I see that I 
was right. The Christian premises really lead 
to the Koman Catholic conclusion. Such an in- 
stitution as The Church, in the Roman Catholic 
sense, is necessary to the fulfilment of the idea 
of an Infallible Oracle on earth to instruct us in 
religion, and to furnish and apply at all times a 
supernatural rule to the conscience. With im- 
mature but not unpractised reasoning powers 
and with a devoted earnestness that bore me 
over every impediment, I worked out the prob- 
lem in about two years to a correct result from 
my original data. To the rationale of the pro- 
cess I invite the reader's attention in the follow- 
ing pages. 

"When I understood that a Revelation had 
been made by Jesus Christ, and had been trans- 
mitted through a succession of teachers from 
his time to ours, and when I perceived that the 



38 Through liovie On, 

Christian world was split up into many divisions 
tliat disputed among themselves as to what 
were the particulars of the Kevelation, it was 
a natm-al and just inference of my mind that 
some one body of Christians was in possession 
of the truth on the subject, and, as a neces- 
sary consequence, that all the bodies that op- 
posed this one were in error. In the same way, 
it was reasonable to expect to find the one true 
religion plainly distinguished from all its would- 
be rivals by the possession of certain indispens- 
able characteristics which should be wanting to 
them. I started, it will be remembered, with 
Protestantism, with the common Christian pre- 
mise of an Infallible Oracle, and with the re- 
solve to find and embrace the one, true, attested 
form of Christianity. The result was inevit- 
able ; inevitable from the logic of the case, and 
from the character of my mind, which could not 
help seeing and obeying the logical necessity.' 
Tliat other minds, many of them better endowed 
and not less sincere than mine, have as earnestly 
examined the subject of religion and have come 
to conclusions very different from those which I 
have to record in my own case, I am perfectly 
weU aware. The fact is one which, while it 
does not in any degree impair the proper force 
of right reasoning, has a high psychological 
value as testifying to the operation of other 



Through Home On. 39 

elements of a very different order Vi]yo\\ the 
course of ratiocination ; which has to be pursued 
in every single case in connexion with all which 
the idiosyncrasy of the case includes in the law 
of its action.^ It is my part here to trace the 

1 If we are to be deterred from asserting a well-con- 
sidered conclusion of our own on this subject of reli- 
gion by tlie circumstance that grave, learned, and good 
men deliberately reject this conclusion of ours and abide 
by the contrary of it, we shall indeed be the sport of the 
winds, without the possibility of any stable ground for 
our minds to rest on. The many upright and able men 
who conclude against Christianity will then, by the very 
fact of their so concluding, forbid us to be Christians ; 
and if we confine the argument to the Christian world, 
it will debar us from every sect and opinion in turn, be- 
cause of the weight of wisdom and excellence arrayed 
in opposition. A remembrance of the fallibility of the 
human mind, and of the influence of other elements be- 
sides pure truth and evidence in shaping and consolidat- 
ing its conclusions, should reassure the most timid as to 
the safety of dissent when their own minds have a rea- 
son for it; and should teach the duty of independent 
thinking, of self-enlightenment and self-reliance; and of 
the essential mischief of surrendering either intellect or 
conscience into alien keeping. I need hardly point out 
how recreant to truth, and what a confusing of the 
issue, it is to make the appeal to prudence or to fear ; 
and how it would put us at the mercy of every intolerant 
man or system, one after another, to be swayed by so 
unworthy and untenable a plea. The impossibility, as 
well as the absurdity, of believing to order, whether 
one's own order or another's, is clearly demonstrated in 
such a case as mine. 



4:0 Through Rome On, 

effect of tlie argument in its gradual develop 
ment on my own mind, which, though hampered 
and misled for so long a time by the figment of 
the Oracle, had in other respects less bias to be 
overcome by the force of reasoning than there 
has been in many other cases. It was simply 
my variety of human nature. The dialectical 
process must stand upon its own merits, apart 
from all subjective entanglements ; and I do not 
believe that any one will be able to point out a 
really unsound link in the concatenation from 
premises to conclusion. To resume : I could 
find no firm basis for a Supernatural Revelation 
on Protestant principles. Protestantism is in its 
root and essence the uprising of the mind 
against external authority. On its religious 
side, it is the denial of the claim of any man or 
body of men to impose a religion upon others. 
Historical Protestantism takes its name from the 
protest of the Reformers in 1529 against a de- 
cree of the Diet of Spires. The same Reform- 
ers, however, had already taken ground against 
the teachings and authority of the Catholic 
Church, to which they had previously yielded 
obedience ; and the word Protestantism has al- 
ways since the epoch of the Reformation borne 
the current sense of opposition to Catholicism 
on the ground of the Right of Private Judg- 
ment as asserted by the sixteenth-century Re- 



Through Borne On, 41 

formers. This definition is narrowed by its last 
clause ; but even so qualified is broader than the 
original signification of opposition to a decree of 
the Diet. In a third and much more philosoph- 
ical sense than either of the two senses just 
noted, Protestantism is the exercise by the indi- 
vidual mind of its natural right to refuse the 
yoke of an external religious authority. Even 
this is not an exhaustive definition ; for Protest- 
antism, being the dynamic aspect of individual- 
ism, extends of course to other spheres besides 
the sphere of religion : but for the purposes of 
the present argument we need not go beyond 
the last definition. Protestantism, then, is the 
exercise of a natural right, what the Heformers 
three hundred and fifty years ago quite correctly 
called the Eight of Private Judgment. They, 
indeed, or the principal men among them, af- 
firmed the right in a very limited degree ; re- 
stricting it to interpretation of the Bible, which, 
cm'iously enough, was one of the possessions 
of the Church, deriving its sanction from her 
authority, and so, of course, standing or fall- 
ing with that authority in its character of a 
divine compilation. But whoever affirms a prin- 
ciple is logically committed to all the conse- 
quences of that principle, those that he does not 
see or declare as well as those that he does see 
and declare. Accordingly, the Beformers are 



42 Through Borne On. 

really responsible in logic for all that legitimately 
follows from the Hight of Private Judgment. 
Now this Kight, being a right, and especially a 
natural right, must have a positive foundation to 
rest on. Mere negation, such as denial of 
E,oman Catholic authority, cannot be the found- 
ation. Every negation implies a pre-existing 
affirmative principle to authorise it. He who 
rightly denies does so by virtue of some princi- 
ple wliich justifies him in denying; and this 
underlying principle, whatever it is, is the funda- 
mental ultimate principle in the case. If the 
Keformers had the right to seize and interpret 
the Bible for themselves, it must have been 
either an inherent rio-ht of their own or a rio;ht 
conferred on them by an external authority. 
!Now as to external authority, since that of the 
Koman Catholic Church was against them and 
was denied by them, it seems manifest that there 
was none whatever which could and did confer 
the right in question on them. To say that the 
Eible considered as the word of God gave them 
the right, does not meet the difficulty ; since it 
is plain that they must have possessed and exer- 
cised the right before they could avail themselves 
of the Bible in the premises. Clearly, then, the 
right was not conferred on them by an external 
authority. It only remains, therefore, to con- 
sider it as an inherent natural right ; a right, 



Through Rome On. 43 

that is, pertaining to them as rational human 
beings. As such it must rest on an affirmative 
principle ; and since it is internal, and since the 
natural rights of all men are equal, this affirma- 
tive principle can be nothing else in substance 
than that every man is hy nature the rightful 
judge for himself of every subject presented to 
his mind. This of course involves the denial 
of 'the claim of any man or body of men to im- 
pose a religion upon others. But it is precisely 
this claim that we must admit if we accept the 
theory of an infallible Oracle external to the in- 
dividual man, to impart the particulars of a Su- 
pernatural Revelation ; for it is not pretended 
that there is any fresh oral communication be- 
tween God and man at the present day. There 
is no immediate Kevelation ; but certain men 
claim to have one that is mediate ; that has come 
through successive generations of other men. 
These men, then, referring for their authority to 
other antecedent men, are to supply us with the 
external Infallible Oracle if we are to have it at 
all. Catholics consistently plant themselves on 
this tradition ; calling it infallible, and uninter- 
rupted from Christ and his Apostles to the pres- 
ent day. Protestants inconsistently stand on it; 
admitting it to be fallible, except in the persons 
and writings of some of the very early Chris- 
tians, and to have been obscured and corrupted 



44: Through Rome On, 

during many long ages by superstitious and de- 
signing men. Protestantism contradicts itself 
when it takes this ground ; as I have endeavour- 
ed to show in the preceding argument. The 
Protestant cannot consistently admit the claim 
of any man or body of men to give a divine rev- 
elation. If I seem to some of my readers to be 
wrong in this assertion, they may at least credit 
my statement that it was impossible to me as a 
Protestant to admit the claim. I repeat, in con- 
clusion, that I could find no firm basis for a Su- 
pernatural Revelation on Protestant principles. 
I had either, to give up Revelation or to cease to 
be a Protestant. Protestantism had been put 
on its trial, and had turned out an impostor from 
the supernaturalist point of view. It was my 
destiny to learn the fallacy of Supernaturalism 
itself by following it now into its true develop- 
ment of the Papal system ; which is its proper 
stronghold, and at the same time its predestined 
funeral pile.^ 

1 The other historical revolts against the Papacy are, 
it is clear, as devoid of apostolicity as Luther's Reforma- 
tion. The Papacy serves to cut them all off from 
Christ; for though it, as I of course admit, does not 
reach to him, yet it certainly stands between him and 
all later ecclesiastical pretenders. The Greek schism, for 
instance, -which was not consummated till the eleventh 
century, can be no more authoritative than Protest- 
antism, the new birth of the sixteenth: while the latter 



Through Home On. 46 



Some may say here, that I was too much 
concerned about disputed doctrines ; that I 
should have cared less for the outward form, and 
have sought rather the essentials of spiritual re-^ 
ligion, in which all true Christians are united. 
But if any take this ground, they err in suppos- 
ing it was possible for me to be indifferent to 
doctrines while I believed that Jesus Christ had 
given a doctrinal revelation, as I had always 
been told he had. How should I dare to say 
that Christ's doctrines were not among the " es- 
sentials " of the Christian religion ? And what 
kind of fidelity to Christ, or what kind of con- 
scientiousness, would it have argued, if I had 
sought ease for my mind in acceptance of the 
cut-and-dried tenets offered me, without trying 
with all my might to know if they were the doc- 
trines of the Master, or departures from his 
teaching ? How was I, a mortal in the flesh, to 
discern and avail myself of a purely spiritual 
Christianity ? and how could I venture to say 

enjoys the advantage of being professed by the most 
enlightened and progressive of the heretical adversaries 
of regular Christianity, and sIiotts itself to contain in its 
core the true, living, developing principle of Free 
Thought and Science, the conquerors and saviours 
of the 'world. 



46 Through Rome On. 

that any were " true Christians " but such as 
held the very doctrines of Christ himself? I 
did not find any one content with spiritual re- 
ligion without outward ordinances ; and every 
system of outward ordinances I saw to be con- 
nected with specific doctrine ; and unless one 
professed something of the kind he was under 
a reproach. This talk about spiritual religion, 
in depreciation of doctrine, comes with a very 
bad grace from Evangelical Christians, the peo- 
ple we generally hear it from ; seeing how bitter 
they are against Unitarians and other heterodox 
persons, on the ground of doctrine ; how earn- 
estly they uphold the inspiration of the E'ew- 
Testament writers who anathematise the profess- 
ors of wrong doctrine and forbid Christians to ren- 
der the commonest hospitality or speak a word 
of good-will to such ;^ and finally, how devout is 
their faith in the declaration that he that he- 
lieveth not (in connexion with a specific out- 
ward rite) shall he damned.^ 



If Christianity was in its origin a true and 
divinely-given religion, it could not have been so 
vague as to be without an outward system of 
some kind. Either this system was divine and 

» Gal. i. 8; II John 10, 11. 2 jyiark xvi. 16. 



Through Rome On, 47 

perpetual, or it was not. I thought from some 
evidences in the Scriptures, as well as from the 
natural probability in the case, that it was of a 
divine and perpetual constitution, and so, more- 
over, I was instructed by my living counsellors 
to regard it. Without the outward system, in- 
deed, I could not have laid hold of historical 
Christianity at all. Dr. John Henry Kewman 
seems to state very well the relations of Scrip- 
ture and history on this subject when he says, — • 
" The Apostles refer to a large existing fact, 
their system — ^ the whole counsel of God ': his- 
tory informs us of a system, as far as we can tell, 
contemporaneous with and claiming to be theirs : 
what other claimant is there ?" That inquiry is 
very forcible : What other claimant is there f 
It was necessary that there should be one legiti- 
mate claimant in the case, as I looked at it ; and 
upon examination 1 could find actually no other 
pretender to unbroken continuity of system from 
the Apostles than the Koman Catholic Church. 
The Church of England, with whose pretensions 
my examination started, does indeed lay claim 
to apostolical descent, in one sense or another ; 
but hardly to unbroken continuity of system. 
It is not denied, and it does not admit of denial, 
en the part of this church, that at the time of 
the Reformation the Church of England sepa- 
rated from the Homan Catholic system, of which 



48 Through Home On. 

it had for ages "been part and parcel, and which 
claims unbroken continuity from the Apostles, 
but which the Church of England declares to be 
a departure from the apostolical system. Now 
whether we admit the Roman Catholic claim, or 
the denial of it by the Church of England, it is 
clear that the latter is without the continuity in 
question. If the Roman Catholic claim be true, 
the Church of England lost the continuity by its 
act of separation at the Reformation. If on the 
other hand, the Church of England is right in 
its denial of the claim, then it follows that that 
Church had, along with the rest of Christian 
Europe, broken the continuity long before the 
Reformation, by partaking of the lapse from the 
system of the Apostles. By no track of fair 
reasoning can this conclusion be avoided. Even 
if we were to grant that at the Reformation the 
Church of England returned to the system of 
the Apostles, it would still remain clear that its 
continuity was broken. Unless it had once 
broken off, a return would be impossible. And 
then the break dispels the authoritative charac- 
ter o^ the Church. If she ever fell away from 
Christ and lost the spirit of truth, she is thence- 
forth no trustworthy guide, no authoritative in- 
terpreter such as I was looking for. My search 
was not for a goodly fellowship of believers, but 
for an authoritative Teacher, upheld by God's 



Through Rome On. 49 

own arm, informed by God's own spirit, so that 
she could never, from the apostles' time to ours, 
teach wrongly and falsify the word of Christ. I 
could not have enduring respect for a geograph- 
ical and headless Catholicity, that was one thing 
in England, another in E-ussia, a third at Home. 
Besides, the Anglo-Catholics were only a hand- 
ful of students, not presuming to claim, and very 
•clearly outside of the possibility of possessing, 
the attribute of present infallibility any more 
than their Low-church opponents. If I were tc 
accept traditional teaching as my rule of faith, 
it ought surely to be by preference derived from 
a body of higher pretensions, whose separation 
from the Apostles was not so manifest, at any 
rate. And these Anglicans (as Dr. Newman 
has noted in one of his Essays) depended on 
what may be flatteringly called their very dubi- 
ous orders for their Church ; while apostolically, 
the legitimacy of the orders springs naturally 
from the constitution and authority of the 
Church. The Church, I argued, cannot be a 
national institution. Super hanc petrarri does 
not refer to England, nor even to Rome. The 
first centuries, if their teaching were perfectly 
accessible and clear, as it assuredly is not, would 
be no authority separated from succeeding Chris- 
tianity " to the end of the world." (Matt, 
xxviii. 20.) How arbitrary to assign the first 



50 Through Rome On, 

three centuries as the period of God's flying 
visit to the Church ! How fanciful the notion 
that doctrine was divinely watched over for 
three hundred years, and thenceforth abandoned 
to the vagaries and corruptions of men. Fathers 
and councils developed the doctrine in the first 
three centuries ;^ fathers and councils continued 
to develop it in the succeeding time : but the 
Holy Spirit, it would seem, w^as with the fathers 
and councils of tlie former period, and the spirit 
of error with those that followed. This is very 
different from the promise of Christ in the gos- 
pel; and such a modification of it to suit a 
modern case I could not accept or fail to see 
through. It was a continuous, unbroken, infalli- 
ble Church that I sought for. Certainly there 
is no such institution on earth, as I found out 
afterwards; but certainly the Christian theory 
demands such an institution, and I was right to 
turn a^'ay from an insular church, " by law es- 
tablished," as not answering to the demand. I 
took the whole Bible language on the subject as 
divinely true ; and finding the Church declared 
to be the pillar and ground of the truth (I 
Tim. iii. 15), without s;pot or wrinkle^ &c. 
(Eph. V. 27) ; and that Christ had established 

1 The first General Council, so called, met in the 
fourth century— 325; but this fact is not inconsistent 
with the statement in the text. 



TJiTOugh Rome On. 61 

the Churcli and promised that the gates of hell 
should not prevail against it (Matt. xvi. 18), and 
that He would be with it alway, to the end of 
the world (Matt, xxviii. 20) ; I could not believe 
in any society's being the true Church that had 
at any time lapsed from the high conditions 
predicated of the Spouse of Christ. Not only 
was there a relative probability for the infalhble 
constitution of the Church, but there were inti- 
mations in the Scriptures besides of such a mode 
of divine operation. The Old Testament showed 
what we may call a possession of the prophets, 
so that they were obliged, by a power super- 
seding their own wills, as in the case of Balaam,^ 
to speak what was put into their months ; and 
something ot the kind was foretold of the Apos- 
tles in the I^ew (Matt. x. 19, 20). The Jewish 
establishment also seemed endowed with a cer- 
tain official infallibility or inspiration, from what 
was said of Caiaphas in John xi. 51 ; and the 
promise of the Teacher and Remembrancer and 
Spirit of Truth, to abide with the Church for- 



1 The story of Balaam, which has perhaps been spoilt 
on its way to us, is, it must be admitted, not perfectly 
clear on this point; but the prophet, if we are so to call 
him, would seem to have been at least as much under 
compulsion as the beast he rode. The painfully bun- 
gling beginning in ISTum. xxii. is followed by a smoother 
continuation and ending in the next two chapters. 



62 Through Rome On, 

ever (John xiv. 16, IT, 26), seemed to be under- 
stood and acted on by tlie Apostles in the Cath- 
olic sense when they spoke in that assured tone 
of divine authority, For it seemed good to the 
Holy Ghost and to us (Acts xv. 28), in the 
Council of Jerusalem. !Now, indeed, applying 
my profane reason to the matter, I can readily 
admit the Protestant naturalising of those scrip- 
tures which once seemed to me so instinct with 
a supernatural character and meaning; but at 
that time I was no naturaliser : I was young, un- 
seasoned, and full of faith ; and the Catholic in- 
terpretation, so confirmatory of the expectations 
excited by the Christian theory, appeared to me 
most convincingly true. With a strong disposi- 
tion to believe in Christianity, the general evi- 
dences of Christianity seem convincing ; and so 
with a strong disposition to believe in the infal- 
lible Church. The one true Church that I felt 
the need of had to be infallible, in order that its 
truth as a fact in the supernatural order should 
be assured to me ; and so the " proofs from holy 
writ " were very conclusive. The exclusiveness 
of the Catholic claim suited my ideal conception 
of God's Church ; and I was prepared to be de- 
lighted with Milner's ingenious applicaticn of 
Solomon's judgment to the subject. Here, too, 
Scripture came in to fortify my prepossessions. 
The one faith and fold, the true vine, the woeful 



Through Borne On, 53 

fate of separated brandies, continually saluted 
mj eyes, not only in the polemic fourth gospel 
(which of course I supposed to be written by the 
Apostle John), but on page after page of the 
New Testament besides. I was never for a mo- 
ment deceived into taking the Church for a lib- 
eral institution. As such, indeed, I could not 
have believed in it. It was because it was im- 
perious, exclusive, uncompromising, anathema- 
tising, that I recognised it as the body spoken of 
in Scripture and demanded by the Christian pre- 
mises. The loose thinking of Protestants about 
the necessary marks of the Church, and the pos- 
sibility of splints retaining their orthodoxy, was 
intolerable to me. Not less intolerable was, as 
soon as I became acquainted with it, the milk- 
and-water spirit displayed by many Catholics in 
humbling their rehgion before its enemies, by 
timid apology that sacrificed the truth, and by 
faint-heartedness and paltering with their duty 
in its visible practice. The Catholic who bent 
his knee in Protestant worship, or who equivo- 
cated about Exclusive Salvation, or placed the 
Papal prerogatives on the ground of human con- 
sent, made me ashamed for him and for the re- 
ligion he misrepresented ; and recalled the Lao- 
dicean message in He v. iii. 15, 16. Without 
this discerning of spirits and this thorough-going 
method of dealing with pregnant principles, I 



54: Through Rorrie On. 

slioiild either never have found mj way into the 
Church, or never have found my way out of it 
afterwards. 



Before proceeding further, I will remark that 
in my expository observations in previous and 
succeeding pages, I draw freely upon my recol- 
lection of both Protestant and Catholic authors 
who were my instructors in the past; and it may 
be that in some instances I have, though unin- 
tentionally, borrowed the very language which, 
impressed itself upon my memory at a more plas- 
tic period than the present. 



♦ My first confessor was the Reverend Henry 
"Benedict Coskery, Rector of the Baltimore 
Cathedral ; at whose hands I received conditional 
baptism on the first day of November (All Saints'), 
1843 ; I being then in my sixteenth year. My 
first communion soon followed ; and a few months 
afterwards I was confirmed by Archbishop Ec- 
cleston. So my Catholic life began ; a life in 
which my religious tendencies were fed and nour- 
ished, and allowed to expand in a congenial at- 
mosphere of peace and devotion. I look back on 
it, and on the persons who helped me to walk by 
its means purely and faithfully along the strait 



Through Home On. 55 

path tlirongli the critical period of my youth, 
not only without reproach, but with a loving ten- 
derness and a gratitude that will not fail. I can 
never forget how, struggling with an orphan's 
grief, I found consolation on the breast of the 
undying Mother that remained to me in the 
Church. The fresh, buoyant feelings which in- 
spired us in the morning of life we remember 
with an inexpressible yearning at a later period 
when they can never return ; and I go back to 
those feelings now, in recalling the Catholic as- 
sociations of my boyhood, when earth was so fair 
and full of promise, and heaven fairer still, as 
pictured and reflected in the religion of my choice. 
Others may have their hard tales to tell of this 
religion, which shielded and cherished me when 
I was very poor and weak and could find no 
other such friend ; but my testimony shall and 
must be to its honour, or I should be the basest 
of ingrates and the most untruthful of witnesses 
as well. In the proper place I shall have enough 
to say against the logic of its doctrine ; but in 
treating of the practical training it gave me at 
this early time when I came to it in such sore 
spiritual need, and of the intimate acquaintance 
into which I soon grew with the character of its 
ministry and offices, no language will do but that 
of thankfulness and praise. I migh! say of it, as 
a boy that I once knew said of his instructors : 



56 Through Rome On. 

that it taught me " all goodness." It inculcated 
an heroic virtue. I met with no gross scandals 
anywhere in connexion with it. If there were 
any disappointment about it, it was that so many 
Catholics seemed insensible to the high demands 
and daily inspirations of their religion. For me, 
it was a perpetual feast of the spirit, where 
" crude surfeit " was impossible, and though my 
long hunger was appeased, the zest of appetite 
never departed while faith remained to supply 
the assimilative principle. The needs of both 
heart and mind were supplied to me, for the time, 
in this wondrous Catholicism ; which only they 
who are ignorant of it can regard as being in its 
worship and distinctive doctrines mere formalism 
and superstition. I studied the service of the 
altar, and imbibed Christian teaching under the 
symbolic forms of its vestments and ceremonies. 
Every robe of the sanctuary, each prescribed act 
of celebrant or assistant there, is significant of 
something in the Gospel, or of some ancient 
Christian habit, which was cherished by men of 
old, though it is repudiated by our modern sec- 
taries, and stigmatised as " theatrical." The 
public rites of the Catholic worship are continual 
incentives to private devotion. So are distinctive 
Catholic doctrines which to Protestants seem 
worse than unmeaning. The doctrine of Purga- 
tory quickened my charity, and was as a coal 



Through Borne On. 67 

from tlie altar, moving my lips in prayer. The 
Keal Presence made the sacrament a communion 
indeed, and one of such love and fervour as I can 
never forget. No wonder Luther, with that deep 
craving heart of his, was unable to give up the 
doctrine ; so that his spite against popery went 
no farther in this direction than to substitute 
con for tranSj and cling to the impanation of his 
God. No wonder High-church Protestants 
hanker after the doctrine to-day, and go out early 
in the morning with sweet spices, seeking the 
body of the Lord. I speak that I know, when I 
testify to the vast power of the sacramental sys- 
tem of the Catholic Church, and to the good ef- 
fects which it so widely works among its disciples. 
It no doubt has its grave mischiefs and abuses 
also ; though on this score there has been a vast 
deal of rash judgment, as well as of false state- 
ment, on the part of an ti- Catholics, fomented, 
unhappily, in many instances, by low-minded 
Catholics, seeking in this scandalous way to 
curry favour with the enemies of their religion. 
No doubt, too, that goodness is the most health 
ful and desirable which can stand alone and is 
bravely and really independent of all such things 
as ritual observances. When in the progress of 
the race a high and robust morality, informed 
by true scientific conceptions of nature in all its 
departments, shall reign over the earth, and 



58 Through Rome On, 

those subtle amalgams tlie religions of mankind 
shall have shed their last "perfume and suppli- 
ance " with their parting breath ; when the mys- 
tic rite shall no longer sway the conscience, — 
when the great Pan is indeed dead, — -then the 
magic of the "outward and visible sign" may 
have passed away also. But in the present order, 
which will endure some time yet, the votaries of 
dogmatic faith cannot dispense with Jacob's Lad- 
der for their ascending and descending angels' 
use; and the Catholic Church is mightier than 
her rivals in proportion to the superior enginery 
of her sacramental system. Protestants are not 
thoroughly at home with the great ecclesiastical 
developments of Original Sin, the Trinity, the 
Incarnation and Atonement, the Eucharist ; any 
more than they are with the old-world cathedrals 
and abbey remains which they have wrested 
from Catholic hands and turned from sanctuaries 
into shows. The " fundamental " tenets have a 
coherence and concurrence in the Catholic system 
which they do not at all display in their trans- 
planted condition. The Catholic Eucharist is in 
close and effective relation to the central mystery 
of the Atonement. It is the great act of worship, 
the daily sacrifice on myriads of shining altars 
over the whole world, as well as the special feast 
and offering of the individual Christian, his in 
spiring food through life, the viaticum that ac- 



Through Rome On, 59 

companies and sustains him when he descends at 
last into the darkness of the grave. The Real 
Presence is the greatest qnickener of piety in the 
refined and imaginative soul. The Incarnation 
has made nothing thenceforth impossible or fool- 
ish that faith can propose ; and here the twink- 
ling taper before the shrine shows that the Lord 
is really in his holy temple, waiting in bodily 
presence to receive the adoration and listen to 
the wants of high and low alike, through all the 
hours of the day. Having submitted to the au- 
thority of the Church, I made no more difficulty 
about one of its dogmas than about another; 
taking them all upon the same authority, with- 
out which the natural reason and instincts must 
condemn them all as foundationless conceits 
together. It is true that some of them soon 
grew to be peculiarly trying to my mind ; but I 
perceived that the question was of accepting the 
one common foundation which, with the primal 
assumption that it involves, makes one dogma as 
much above the criticism of private judgment as 
another. "What I may call the painful dogmas 
were not those which encounter the largest share 
of Protestant denunciation ; and I will venture 
here the opinion, that it is an essentially super- 
ficial criticism which invokes the condemnation 
of reason in a special manner for such corruptions 
as all Protestants agree in rejecting. I shall re- 



60 Through Rome On, 

turn to this point hereafter ; repeating now that 
I accepted Catholic theology, not piecemeal, as 
an agglomeration of separately tested fragments, 
but in one body of doctrine, upon the one broad 
foundation which if authoritative for any dogma, 
is not less authoritative for every other in tlie 
same order of Supernatural Kevelation. Tran- 
substantiation, for instance, has precisely the 
same foundation that the Trinity has, that Incar- 
nation has, that the monstrous Devil-doctrine 
has, which Evangelical Protestants deem so salu- 
tary and holy. Reason rejects all these doc- 
trines; and the supposed divine Authority w^hich 
beards reason, and in the case of customary peo- 
ple hushes it to sleep, sustains them all. This 
Authority is for Catholics, avowedly the Church ; 
for Protestants, ecclesiastical education welding 
firm the fetters of traditional faith. When one 
has so effectually hushed his reason as to believe 
that a man like unto other men, v/alking, talking, 
eating, sleeping, handled, suffering, failing, de- 
spairing, giving up the ghost, — was the Supreme 
Being, the absolutely Uncaused and Eternal 
One,^ ther^ is thenceforth for that believer no 

1 Whatever fanciful metaphysics may still be indulged 
about two natures in Christ, probably none of my read- 
ers will revive the exploded heresy of two persons, or 
have any difficulty in seeing that the language I have 
used in the text is properly descriptive of the Orthodox 



Through Rome On. 61 

absurd or incredible doctrine whatever, provided 
only it lie within the pale of his own education 
and traditional sympathies. A believer in the 
Incarnation and proper Deity of Christ is estop- 
ped from pleading reason against Transubstan- 
tiation. As the gist of the horror in the doctrine 
of Exclusive Salvation lies in the conception of 
the Deity as the voluntary eternal Tormentor of 
His creatures, so the gist of the perversion in 
Transubstantiation lies in the anthropomorphism 
of dragging the Unknowable down to the sphere 
of sense. A God-man is as monstrous and irrev- 
erent a notion as God-bread. 

Protestants, not feeling any tenderness for 
the doctrine, of Transubstantiation, recognise the 
full force of the philosophical argument against 
it, and wonder that any can be blind to its mon- 
strousness and impossibility; yet many of these 
same Protestants continue to profess the certainly 
not less monstrous and impossible tenet of the 
Pesurrection of the Body, in which they have 
been educated ; and seem quite unsuspicious that 
their eyes as really need purging as those of the 
Catholics. But it is not meet for a Christian to 
appeal to philosophy in a question of revelation ; 
and irnpossible is no term for him to apply to a 

Christian view of Him in whom dweUeth all the fulness- of 
tJie Godliead iodily. 



62 Through Rome On, 

doctrine. Philosophy is man's wisdom, in which 
Christian faith does not stand, but opposes to it 
the power of God (I Cor. ii. 5); and there is no 
impossibihty to him that believeth (Mark ix. 23). 
Philosophy teaches that an interruption of the 
order of nature is impossible ; but the Christian 
does not mind this when he comes to talk about 
his religion, but declares that the philosophical 
impossibility has repeatedly happened ; and he 
finds no difficulty in it, because the Gospel, 
which is for him higher authority than philos- 
ophy, says that all things are possible with God 
(Matt. xix. 26 ; Mark x. 27, xiv. 36). The pos- 
sibility of miracle once admitted, one miracle is 
as possible and as much above the criticism of 
philosophy as another; the only real question 
about any doctrinal miracle being, is it vouched 
for by the revealing authority in which we be- 
lieve ? If miracle may override the objections 
of philosophy in regard to the Kesurrection of 
the Body, the Catholic is clearly at liberty to ap- 
ply the same triumphant argument in support of 
Transubstantiation. In either case the thing is 
possible enough upon the condition predicated in 
Mark ix. 23, — If thou canst believe ; and this 
condition depends upon something else than 
natural philosophy. On the basis of faith, strenu- 
ously asserted by Protestants as well as Catho- 
lics, — external authority conveying a superna- 



Through Rome On. 63 

tural revelation, — Transubstantiation is no more 
amenable to reason than anj other doctrine. 
The only question is, is it revealed, vouched for 
by the preaccepted authority ? It never was 
hard to me v^hile I accepted the infallible Ora- 
cle. It does not novp" seem to me so glaringly 
absurd as the Kesurrection of the Body ;^ and it 
is infinitely less repulsive than the heinous Or- 
thodox blasphemy of Eternal Hell. 



Not only was Transubstantiation inoffensive 
to me from the first, but, ^vhile it found an easy 
acceptance on the plane of faith, it was comfort- 
ing in its influence, and also decidedly stimulat- 
ing to both piety and conscientiousness. It made 

^ I speak of the common view of the Resurrection, in 
which most of nshave been educated, which children are 
still made to imbibe in the nursery and the Sunday- 
school, and which the great body of Christians cherish 
all their lives. The few who seek to pare away the most 
offensive grossness of the view for themselves by adopt- 
ing such amendments of the doctrine as may be found, 
for instance, in Mr. Maurice's Theological Essays (leav- 
ing no re-surrection, that is, rising again of what has been 
dead and buried, to be believed in at all), are at no pains 
to rebuke the popular superstition on this subject, though 
they are so very indignant about Transubstantiation : 
and no Orthodox Christian, at any rate, will question the 
reanimation of the identical Body which hung upon the 
Cross, and which was tlie first fruits of them thai slept. 



64: * Through Home On, 

me love the cliurcli and the beautiful altar 
wherever I chanced to be. It drew me in spirit 
to such places when they were at a distance, and 
quickened prayer and meditation almost to ec- 
stasy at times. And then — the preparation for 
communion ! Only to a person of lively sensi- 
bilities, perhaps only to one who had at some 
time lived the life of faith, could I hope to con- 
vey an adequate conception of the spiritual con- 
ditions with which I made my fortniglitly ap- 
proach to the divine banquet. The Catholic is 
required to receive his Lord fasting, and to have 
cleansed his soul beforehand by searching self- 
examination, hearty contrition for his sins, hum- 
ble and particular confession of them at the foot- 
stool of penance, together with a sincere resolve 
to lead, with God's help, a pure and holy life in 
the future ; without which, he is instructed by 
his religion, the priestly absolution would avail 
him nothing, and the receiving of the Body and 
Blood would be an awful and a damning sacri- 
lege. As a Catholic, I learned from the stand- 
ards of my religion, from the harmonious voice 
of the whole church, sounding the diapason of 
many hundred years, that to approach the Eu- 
charist demanded a sanctity which only the ut- 
most devotion, crowned by divine grace, could 
lift me to or preserve in me. I strove, with 
many stumbles and falls, but with ever renewed 



Through Rome On. 65 

hope and effort, which were surely not without 
their fruits, to keep m j soul in this state of grace. 
I frequented the sacraments, and made my pre- 
paration for confession and communion as if the 
moment for my dissolution had arrived, and the 
uncovered soul were about to stand at the bar of 
final judgment. At seventeen, this world had 
so small a place in my esteem, and I was so ab- 
sorbed in the teachings of faith, that I might 
have been addressed in the language of the Epis- 
tle to the Colossians : you are dead, and your 
life is hid icith Christ in God, I felt willing 
to die or to live, as it should please God ; and to 
take no thought for the morrow, but to leave all 
to Him. The natural effect of these dispositions 
and of the devout ordinances with which I was 
surrounded was to preserve me to a great extent 
from the corruption which spreads its deadly pol- 
luting slime over the pathway of sanguine youth. 
The sacraments, the sign of the cross, the com- 
munion of saints which was opened to me in de- 
votional exercises, in ascetic writings, and in the 
confessional, all contributed to build up my soul 
in the resolve and practice of a virtuous life. I 
was conciliated rather than repelled by particu- 
lar doctrines that Protestants cry out against 
most loudly. "Without feeling any special at- 
tractiveness in the doctrine of Indulgences, I 
readily perceived that according to the definition 



66 Through Borne On. 

of the Church there is no license to sin in it, and 
that the power of granting indulgences is a Christ- 
like function, which the Church may naturally 
claim and exercise so that it shall be very service- 
able to Christian people. The sweeping denun- 
ciation of Relics, by zealous Protestants, I saw 
to be inconsistent with a genuine faith in such 
narratives as those in II Kings xiii. 21, and Acts 
xix. 12, as well as with the instinctive prompt- 
ings of the heart in all ages and conditions of 
men. The Invocation of Saints seemed in pro- 
per accord with an earnest belief in their beati- 
fied state and with the article of the Apostles' 
Creed in which they are mentioned. How^ ex- 
actly, they could hear our prayers, was of no 
more importance than how they could know of 
the " one sinner that repenteth," over whose 
earthly act they rejoice so exceedingly.^ We say 
" I pray you," every day, to our fellow-men here : 
surely we may say the same without idolatry to 
our friends in heaven. By such simple yet forci- 
ble considerations as these was the practice de- 
fended to my mind against the common objec- 
tions. Indeed, the whole Catholic life was re- 
commended to me from the beginning as being 
a daily realisation of the Scriptures and early 
Christian symbols, in relation to which I had 

J Luke XV. 10. 



Through Rome On. 67 

found Protestantism so sadly out of joint : and 
in nothing was this fulfihiient more powerfully 
felt than in the mystic tie which made a common 
family of all the children of God and heirs of 
salvation, in heaven, on earth, and in the patient 
middle state that most of all called for tender 
and continual remembrance. It was a tie that 
death had no power to sunder, but could only 
plat into a firmer fibre stretching across the gulf 
of time. It made a fellowship and intercourse 
of the redeemed ; so that those on earth not only 
believed in the existence of their invisible breth- 
ren, but communicated with them, felt their com- 
panionship, and interchanged with them constant 
o£Bces of service and affection. The superemi- 
nent rank accorded to the Virgin Mother, and 
the fervent trust and devotion with which she is 
regarded by all faithful Catholics, I soon per- 
ceived to flow naturally from the Nicene and 
Ephesian doctrine of Christ's divinity, from the 
seed sown by Paul's teaching of the unholiness 
of natural generation, and from the need of a 
ledge neither too high nor too low for the long- 
ing soul's reach and rest from the pains and 
perils of its body of death. The Divine Mater- 
nity is no more shocking than the Divine Son- 
ship. Call it idolatry if j^ou will : it is only as 
idolatry is inherent in all human worship that 
this deserves the name. F. W. Eobertson says 



68 Through Rome On. 

well, that it is only a human God tliat man can 
worship; and it may be added, that we should be 
half orphans with only a Father in heaven. 
The tender and great-souled Theodore Parker 
used to pray to God as " Our Father and our 
Mother "; and who that conceives of the invis- 
ible Supreme as a loving Parent, but blends the 
feminine with the masculine ideal in the object 
of his adoration ? The God that is angry and 
terrible is a man ; but the loving, forgiving, com- 
passionate God, who would fain gather us as the 
hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, this 
God who is nearer to us than the other, and at 
whose footstool we have learned to trust as well 
as to pray, is woman rather than man. "We have 
an instinctive feeling that only in a mother's 
heart can love ineffable dwell; and until the love 
of God so fills us with its perfection as utterly to 
cast out fear, we labour with a sense of some- 
thing wanting in the Divine Being. Readers 
who have partaken of the rich spiritual treasures 
in George Macdonald's novels cannot forget that 
touching description in Bohert Falconer of the 
Presbyterian widow writhing over the thought of 
hell for her castaway son, and crying in the agony 
of her prayer : — " O Lord ! I canna say thy will 
be done. But dinna lay 't to mychairge; for 
gin ye was a mither yersel\ ye wadna pit him 
there." As the Son, the God of the Christian 



Through Rome On, 69 

multitude, is a softening and reduction, so to 
speak, of Deity, which thus becomes tangible 
and familiar to man, so the Mother is a farther 
humanisation of Divine existence, and a definite 
realisation of the feminine principle already sug- 
gested by the Son. If Jesus brings us nearer to 
the Father, Mary brings us nearer to Jesus, from 
whom all her dignity and glory are derived; 
and I felt that my poor soul needed every link 
in the spiritual connexion. Nor could I rate as 
^n ordinary human being her whom God had 
saluted by his Angel and overshadowed with his 
power, and whom, according to the very words 
of her own prophecy, I found all generations 
calling blessed (Luke i. 48). I had learned in 
my Protestant education that the briefest contact 
with the person of Jesus in a crowd had commu- 
nicated virtue (Mark V. 29 ; Luke vi. 19, viii. 46); 
and could I now find difficulty in believing that 
she who had conceived and borne him, and pil- 
lowed him on her heart, who had directed his 
first footsteps, and who received his last sigh and 
remembrance from the Cross, had partaken in 
largest measure of that overflowing holiness 
which distilled on soul and body together at a 
touch ? I had not been taught to believe in the 
efficacy of contact with a dead prophet's bones 
(II Kings xiii. 21), or with the hem of a garment 
(Luke viii. 44), or with miraculous handkerchiefs 



70 Through Rome On. 

and aprons (Acts xix. 12), and to call others infi- 
dels for not believing such things, to be staggered 
now when the Church gave a wider scope to the 
same teaching, and told me that all genuine 
relics and holy beings were to be regarded with 
faith and veneration, and that Mary in particular 
was " full of grace " and worthy to be honoured 
above every other creature. To discredit Mary 
was, I saw, to discredit the Incarnation, in which 
God had chosen her to play so exalted a part. 
She from whom it had pleased Him that Hia 
Son should be made (Gal. iv. 4) must have been 
peerless and immaculate to furnish the incorrupt- 
ible humanity that was to triumph over death 
and the grave, and sit at the right hand of the 
Father on his throne. If \hQ grayer of a right- 
eous man availeth much (James v. 16), how ef- 
fectual must not be the intercession of the Mother 
of the Lord, whose voice on earth had moved 
the yet unborn and been the signal of i\\Q Holy 
Ghost (Luke i. 41). That she had great favour 
and power in heaven was a probability corroborat- 
ed by ages of devout faith and made certain by 
the solemn assurance of the Church. There was 
no repugnance to hold me back ; and I found 
comfort in the dying Saviour's word, Behold 
thy Mothers 

1 John xix. 27. 



Through Borne On, 71 



Mr. Capes, in dsscribing his Catholic experi- 
ence, declares that to him *' the act of confession 
was never anything but an unpleasant necessity." 
It was an unpleasant necessity to me too ; but it 
was something else besides. The forgiveness 
of sins was as real to me as the communion of 
saints, I heartily believed in the doctrine, and 
recognised the tribunal of Penance as a well-fit- 
ting part of the machinery of a supernatural re- 
ligion. Resorting to it was to Mr. Capes " like 
a small surgical operation"; and he avouches 
that the only comfort he derived from it was the 
sense of relief from a disagreeable duty each 
time that the task came to an end. One is truly 
to be pitied who has to go through such an ordeal 
without the compensating return which the 
hearty Catholic receives. In my case, the actual 
confessing to the priest, though certainly very 
trying, was less severe than the preparation for 
it. I so dreaded falling short of my duty in this 
preparation, and thus incurring tlie guilt of sacri- 
lege in the sight of Heaven. To avoid this I 
wrestled in agony with my conscience before 
God. Deliberate blasphemy would have been as 
possible to me as a perfunctory confession. 
When the hours of prayer and self-searching 
were ended, the rest was comparatively easy. I 



72 Through Rome On. 

could almost forget that it was a man I told mj 
sin to and made mj judge. That man was in 
Christ's stead, and Christ was God. I believed 
fervently that He whose word could not fail had 
said, Whose sins you remit, they are remitted ; 
and as I had not been able to put np with any 
simulacrum of God's Church among the sects, 
so no " general absolution '^ would do for me 
here, nor answer to the strong terms of the divine 
commission. I took true pains with my part of 
the tranaction, and was repaid in feeling the sig- 
nificance and lasting authority of the gospel 
words brought home to me, as the precise un- 
doubting ego te absolvo was murmured over my 
head. I know that not all Catholics get the 
same benefit from Confession. Mr. Capes is 
perhaps a not unfavourable instance of a large 
class who are imfitted by temperament to profit 
by the institution. The enforcement of the ob- 
ligation by superiors, too, though from the Cath- 
olic point of view a seeming necessity, is often 
attended with miserable scandals. I remember 
hearing from one who had been educated at a 
Jesuit college, of the painful scenes he had wit- 
nessed there when boys, driven into the confes- 
sional at regular periods, would sometimes enter 
it with curses on their lips. After all, however, 
there is, I am sure, to the numerous body of 
willing and earnest penitents the world over, 



Through Borne On. 73 

great good, as well as great consolation, in the 
sacrament of Penance ; which pious souls that 
tremble to think they have forfeited their baptis- 
mal innocence prize and cling to as a " second 
plank after shipwreck." I am bound to acknow- 
ledge that the influence of the confessional was 
in my case salutary. It tempered and restrained 
the warmth of a youthful constitution ; it purged 
motives of their selfishness ; it inculcated mod- 
esty and self-denial ; it made sin daily more and 
more hateful to me, and virtue more and more 
amiable and attractive. It taught me to know 
myself; it imparted a priceless lesson of self- 
examination. I can never forget the searching 
scrutiny with which I used to probe my heart 
for confession, how entirely that heart was laid 
bare before God and the priest, how quickened I 
was in faith, hope and charity afterwards. Pro- 
testants know little of the preparation which the 
devout and instructed Catholic goes through as 
the preliminary stage before kneeling at the tri- 
bunal of penance to obtain pardon for his sins. 
They — Protestants — commonly look upon the 
priest as a professional pardon-broker, and upon 
the seeker of absolution at his hands as one who 
goes with a light conscience to bargain for for- 
giveness. Now it is true that the whole doctrine 
of atonement and pardon through Jesus Christ, 
whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, 



74: Through Rome On, 

is essentially mercenary and repugnant to the in- 
stinctive promptings of a healthy conscientious- 
ness ; but it is also true, that the Catholic teach- 
ing and practice which grow out of and find a 
firm foundation in this doctrine are really very 
different from what Protestants to a great extent 
suppose and represent them to be. The Catholic 
Church teaches, not only in her larger symbols 
of faith, but in her minutest instructions to stu- 
dents in seminaries, and to children learning the 
catechism in her schools, as well as in her innu- 
merable books of devotion in various languages, 
that no words of absolution pronounced by 
priest, bishop, or pope, can do away with the 
guilt or penalty of njortal sin without hearty con- 
trition on the sinner's own part; and that to make 
confession without such contrition, would be sac- 
rilege, and would fearfully add to the guilt of 
the soul. This teaching has been so broadly and 
unceasingly inculcated by authority among Cath- 
olics that it must be accepted as the doctrine of 
the Church on the forgiveness of- sin. I know 
that there have been subtle speculations among 
theologians as to the effect of a certain kind and 
degree of attrition, joined to the sacramental 
rite ; but all such things are " caviare to the gen_ 
eral," and find no part in the communings of 
priest and penitent in the confessional. A more 
solid difficulty seems to me to lie in a consider- 



Through Rome On. 76 

atlon of the possible perversions by iudividnal 
priests in this secret tribunal. It is not to be 
questioned that such abuses may occur, nay, 
that they have occurred in many grievous in- 
stances, and that they probably do occur some- 
times everywhere, and will from time to time 
occur as long as auricular confession is practised. 
Even assuming a sacred obligation for the prac- 
tice, the liability here spoken of must be admitted. 
The Catholic will indeed argue, and plausibly 
enough upon the assumption of the embodied 
revelation of the Divine will, that the possible 
abuse of a rightful ordinance should not be 
pleaded against its use ; that the rightfulness of 
Confession is determined by the indefeasible wit- 
ness of the Church ; and that since God has com- 
mitted the forgiveness of sins to His apostolic 
ministry, we are not to pretend to be wiser than 
He in regard to the safety, nor independent of 
Him in regard to the obligation, of the institu- 
tion. This argument cannot be invalidated while 
we admit the authority of the Church as witness 
and teacher ; but it is of course worth nothing 
when that authority is overthrown. Looking at 
Confession as a purely human institution, with- 
out any divine obligation whatever, the argument 
from its abuses becomes extremely formidable. 
That the danger lessens with the increase of gen- 
eral intelligence can hardly be questioned ; though 



76 Through Rome On, 

it can never quite pass away until hierocracy it 
self lias given up the ghost. As Dean Milman 
remarks in one of his instructive and delightful 
essays, — " the age of the Confessional, of spirit- 
ual direction according to the sense which it bore 
during the Jesuit dominion over the human mind, 
is gone by." (Essay On the Relation of the 
Clergy to the People?) But leaving the general 
aspects of the subject, and giving my own per- 
sonal experience of the Confessional, I am under 
an obligation to testify that its effects were fa- 
vourable to conscientiousness and virtue. Far- 
ther on I shall have to remark on the decatholicis- 
ing effect of certain elements of devotion which 
came to me in this way ; but I have here to re- 
peat mj acknowledgment of indebtedness to the 
sacramental system of Catholicism, which is so 
little understood among Protestants in general; 
and the averment of my belief in the great mul- 
titude of souls to which this system has been a 
true nursing-mother in goodness not less than in 
faith. Do I therefore propose to Protestants 
that they become Catholics and frequent the sac- 
raments ? Nay, I cannot prescribe for the needs 
of their souls. I should be glad if any poor 
words of mine might bring Catholics and Protest- 
ants into better acquaintance and into gentler 
and kindlier relations than before ; but I desire 
to see no conversions from one to the other side. 



Through Home On, 77 

An exchange of one dogmatic faith for another 
is seldom happy. For the rest, that is the best 
religion for one which fits one best. There is no 
universal religion. The notion that there is, 
has filled the earth with horrors and wailing 
until now. All organised religions are alike 
human growths from roots of error. * To esteem 
one divine at the expense of the rest, is a poor 
partisan superstition. The religions which Chris- 
tians call false are as really true and good for 
the people that hold them as Christianity is true 
and good for its disciples. If the good side of 
religion has. been nobly exhibited by Christians, 
so has it been by heathen for even a longer pe- 
riod of time ; and alas for the lofty and exclusive 
pretensions of Christianity ! the earthliness of 
its nature has been abundantly demonstrated 
through the nineteen centuries of modern history 
in which the evil side of religion has been so 
painfully contrasted with the good. So of Cathol- 
icism and Protestantism, that divide the Chris- 
tian ground with which we are most familiar. 
Each is hedged with such divinity in the eyes of 
its followers as to make the other seem a mon- 
ster by comparison ; but in reality, each is good 
for some of the race and very ill adapted to other 
some. The impatience of either side at the con- 
tinued existence and pertinacious claims of the 
other, belongs to the era of unripe thought, 



78 Through Home On. 

which the mass of mankind have not got beyond 
yet, and in which the unphilosophical notion of 
a Supernatural Oracle still clogs the intellect and 
confuses the moral sense. This era is passing 
away, but it will not be unduly hurried; and 
while it lasts, the sensibly decaying order of 
supernaturalist faith must be recognised as hav- 
ing a necessary, and therefore in a certain sense 
a rightful, existence. In dealing with this order, 
one who sees beyond it should be careful not to 
undervalue its importance, not to brand it as an 
idle cumberer of the ground; but to regard it 
with strict justice and all fair allowance; giving 
due credit to its merits, nor setting down aught 
in malice against it. Especially should one who 
undertakes to declare his own experience of this 
order which he has been obliged to abandon, but 
to which so large a portion of mankind are still 
joined in conscience and affection, be candid and 
painstaking in his account. It has been my en- 
deavour here to discharge this duty. I have pre- 
ferred to risk the reproach of prolixity by line 
upon line of iteration, rather than incur the op- 
posite danger of not saying enough to make my 
work clear and to the purpose. It has been my 
design from the first to make my subjective ac- 
quaintance with Christianity shed light upon the 
objective argument. I cannot as a sane man ad- 
mit the claims of this religion now ; but in my 



Through Rome On. 79 

boyhood and early youth it was, under the Cath- 
oL'c forms, largely adapted to my needs, and, as 
I see now, was a necessary stage in my mental 
and spiritual progress. As such, it was good, 
very good in its place; and I am trying to 
bear faithful testimony to the service it ren- 
dered me. 



It was a high ideal that I had set before me, 
the Kingdom of God on earth. I had faithfully 
taken in the theory of a Divine Kevelation, its 
corollary being the visible theocracy of the 
Church, the highest court of appeal in doctrinal and 
moral questions, the supreme spiritual Authority 
on earth, to which all other authority here below, 
including of course the public and the private 
conscience, the individual and the state, is neces- 
sarily subordinate and subject. It is easy, when 
one does not heartily accept the theory, or does 
not perfectly embrace the scope and logical 
requirements of it, to object to this consistent 
view of the Church that it is despotic. Cer- 
tainly it is despotic ; and if the Divine Word had 
been supernaturally uttered to man and embod- 
ied in an infallible Oracle for our guidance 
and rule through all generations, it would have 
to be despotic, and could not be anything else. 
The idea of our having any right to cavil at 



80 Through Home On, 

what it pronounced, or to question its author- 
ity in any way when it asserted it over us, 
would be absurd. 

Here, then, I had found the Church, appar-i 
ently all, and more than all, I had expected to' 
find it. I had hardly at first looked for so 
complete and absolute a spiritual guide ; but as 
I went on I saw the necessity for it, and here it 
was. It was surely a sublime conception, this 
of the heavenly kingdom established upon the 
same soil with the kingdoms of this world, an 
ever- accessible tribunal to decide all questions 
brought before it according to the pure and im- 
partial law of the Most High.' Here was the in- 
former of consciences, the righter of wrongs, the 
absolver from sins, the preparer of the way of the 
Lord. The realisation of my early millennial 
dreams seemed brought about in this anticipation 
of Christ's visible reign on earth. In the person 
of his representative, he seemed, from Peter to 
Gregory XYI., to lead the procession of the' 
Christian ages, giving a new light to history, a 
new voice to poetry, a new beauty and significance 
to the whole life of man. 



1 "What could be more glorious than the idea of the 
Successor of Christ ruling the rulers of the earth, and 
swaying them all by the law of God?" '* The one sub- 
linie theory, the only sublime theory that mankind ever 
framed," &c. — CJiaiies Buxton. 



Through Rome On. 81 

The Koman Catholic Church, viewed with the 
eye of enthusiasm and early faith, seems indeed 
the visible kingdom of God on earth. Her rule 
of spiritual perfection, illustrated by the splendid 
examples of the saints ; that irresistible though 
armless might which the world's annals show 
her to have exercised through so many ages ; the 
regular ranks of her hierarchy, crowned with the 
stupendous sovereignty of the Papal Yicegerent, 
in whom the Almighty himself seems to speak 
with one voice to all the faithful : these marks 
to the ardent neophyte betoken an order not to 
be confounded with that of this world, whose 
afiairs are confused and passing, while the con- 
cerns of the Heavenly kingdom are divine and 
eternal. 

I started with the consecration of my whole 
being to this ideal. It was glorious to feel my- 
self belonging to the City of God, with privi- 
leges that dwarfed all citizenship besides. I had 
been a mourner in Zion for the heritage that I 
sought but could not find ; and now a door had 
been opened to me of the Lord, and there had 
been given unto me beauty for ashes, the oil of 
joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the 
spirit of heaviness. The only thank-offering in 
my power was myself; my affections, my under- 
standing, my will : could I hold back any part 
of the pitiful return? I had the promise of 



82 Through Borne On, 

treasure in heaven that faileth not ; and where 
mj treasure was there should my heart betimes be 
placed. Imagination, inflamed with pious ar- 
dour, grew romantic in visions of the Middle 
Ages, those Ages of Faith, so reviled of men, so 
blessed in the sight of Heaven ; when Science 
was humble and leaned on Religion ; when war, 
and knighthood, and perilous love itself, were 
sanctified with the cross and made instruments 
of salvation; when men really believed in the 
Devil ; when the sin of false doctrine was always 
recognised and reprobated, as if the faithful 
Apostle* were still alive : the glorious Ages that 
were past, but that would come again when the 
earth should be full of the knowledge of the 
Lord as the waters cover the sea. I cherished 
a contempt for the expedients of human living, 
that so often grow dear to the heart and en- 
danger salvation. I destroyed my books like 
the early Christian converts :^ a number of vol- 
umes did I mutilate because of the anticatholic 
character of their contents. I formed myself 
upon the models supplied by the saints and 
ascetic writers. Rodriguez, A-Kempis, St. Fran- 
cis of Sales, and like fervid counsellors, were my 
constant reading ; and, with frequent confession 
and communion, edifying intercourse with fellow- 

1 Gal. i. 8, 9; II John 10, 11. 2 Acts xix. 19. 



Through Home On, 83 

devotees, and daily resort to the ever-open shrines 
forprayer and meditation, nourished unceasingly 
the flame of faith and zeal in my breast. I 
made a point of being thoroughly instructed in 
my religion, and eagerly greeted everything, 
spoken or written, that advanced this object. 
Of course I read stout old Bishop Milner, whose 
JEnd of Controversy and Letters to a Pre- 
bendary are specimens of most ingenious plead- 
ing in clear and nervous English. A volume 
of very clever and scholarly Tracts, by Dr. 
Lingard, the historian, I estimated highly. 
Mohler's Syinbolism was exceedingly serviceable. 
Audin's Luther^ Spalding's JRevieio of D^Au- 
higne^ Kenrick on Baptism, and on Justification, 
"Wiseman's Eight Lectures on the Real Presence, 
and the well-known Amicable Discussion on 
the Church of England and the Reformation, 
were some of the works that assisted me to a 
true understanding of the doctrines and claims of 
the religion I had embraced. But the author to 
whom above all others I was indebted for this kind 
ofinstruction, and to whose logical ability and bold- 
ness my lasting gratitude is due for light and devel- 
opment in both politics and religion, was Doctor 
Orestes A. Brownson ; whose name is an honour 
to American letters, and whose vigorous and 
thorough mind, with his bold, clear style, and 
his fearless habit of turning a subject inside-out 



84 Through Borne On, 

and sending the light completely through it, 
made him a terror to friends and to enemies. 
To Dr. Brownson more than to any other one 
man, as the helper of my personal experience, it is 
due that I know the Catholic religion to its inmost 
core as I do. The materials of the argument had 
now been completely worked up, and had brought 
me to a definite, well understood, and fully ac- 
cepted conclusion, the heads of which may be 
briefly stated. Grod is absolute. God's specially 
ordained supernatural order is the supreme order 
on earth. The Church is the embodiment and 
living representative of this order, and of God, 
its source. The living representative alone can 
define the limits of this order, in general and in 
particular. All practical affairs fall within the 
sphere of morals. The spiritual order is tlie mon- 
itor and tribunal of conscience, and final judge 
of all moral questions whatever on the face 
of the earth. In this domain, neither private 
man nor public authority may ever dispute its 
decree ; since the human and subordinate can- 
not sit in judgment on the divine and supreme. 
Thus, not purely religious matters only, but 
questions of state, international questions, civH 
obligations, marriage relations, &g., are all sub- 
jects for cognisance by the Church. The Pope 
is the ever-present and ever-ready plenipotentiary 
organ of the Church. His authority over tem- 



Through Home On, 85 

poral rulers and tlie public and private conscience 
of Christendom, indeed of the world, does not 
rest on any human consensus, but is inherent 
in the divine constitution of his office. The 
bishops, deriving their functions from the Pope, 
and being in full communion with him, govern 
the several parts of the Church as his officers 
and councillors. The priests are commissioned 
bj the bishops : and all the faithful clergy are 
entitled lo the reverence and obedience of the 
people. This is God's order ; and man is bound 
by the most sacred duty to accept it and yield 
himself entirely to it, without regard to whether 
it works well or ill in the temporal concerns of 
this mortal life. The true destiny and only real 
interest of man is in the life to come. " He that 
loveth his life shall lose it ; and he that hateth 
his life in this world shall keep it unto life 
eternal." 

There was open to me in that time of zealous 
youthful study the excellent library of my first 
director and now- lamented friend, the Yery 
Heverend Henry Benedict Coskery, D.D. ; who, 
having more than once, I believe, refused the 
episcopal dignity, died Yicar General of the 
archdiocese of Baltimore a few years ago. No 
words of mine can add to the honours of this 



86 Through Home On, 

worthy prelate ; but for my own sake, and for 
that sweet charity against which there is no law, 
I w^ill not pass from the mention of him here 
without yielding the tribute to his memory which 
is due from one who knew him so intimately 
once and to whom he was so kind. Dr. Coskery 
was a man of solid learning, as of unaffected 
piety and goodness ; an upright and a judicious 
administrator of his trusts ; and, though not dis- 
playing the graces of oratory, a clear and an 
impressive teacher, as his surviving catechumens 
in and out of the church know. To me, he was 
a patient and an efficient instructor, a winning 
exemplar, a sympathising and never-to-be-forgot- 
ten friend. I deem myself fortunate to have 
had at that time so able and willing a guide. 



I have stated that while I accepted without 
hesitation all the doctrines of my religion on the 
one common ground of faith in the testimony of 
the Infallible Witness, and had no more difficulty 
on this ground with one tenet than with another, 
there w^as nevertheless in my mind a certain 
painfulness about some points of faith which was 
not felt in regard to others. It has been noted 
also that Transubstantiation, Indulgences, Wor- 
ship^ of Saints and Relics, Power of the Keys, — 

^ This word may be misunderstood by some readers, 



Through Rome On. 87 

and I might have added other popular horrors of 
popery, — were not among the painful tenets. 
The Church's explanation on all these points 
seemed to me as reasonable as her authority was 
sufficient to accredit them apart from the expla- 
nation. As long as I really believed in the 
Catholic religion this was so. There were, how- 
ever, other points which were painful to me from 
the first; points held sacred among Orthodox 
Protestants, but which there had not been time 
and opportunity for me to consider during my 
brief career as a Protestant inquirer; and which, 
adopted with the rest of the Catholic teaching, 
made themselves felt in a continual pricking of 
the moral sense now that my anxious quest for 
the true fold was ended and a period of tranquil 
meditation had set in. These points were as to 
the asserted relations between God and man, and 
the momentous question of Human Destiny. 
There was even then an involuntary resistance 
of my mind to that Orientalism which gives its 
complexion to all Christian theology ; and which 
in enlightened Europe and free America, as well 
as in its native Asia, has bowed cowering human- 
ity to the dust in adoration of the King that can 

as well as the word Indulgences wliich precedes it. I will 
therefore explain that Worship of Saints and Relics does 
not mean Divine adoration ; and that Indulgences are not 
permissions to commit sin. 



88 Through Rome On, 

do no wrong, whose blunders are inscrutable 
perfection, whose cruelties are holj from their 
source, whose will is superior to justice, whose 
creature subjects have no rights in his presence, 
but are made to be the playthings of his power 
and the victims of his glory or his rage. Out of 
this formative element of the old civilisation have 
grown, by a gradual process to be traced in ec- 
clesiastical history, the figments of the distinctive 
characters and functions of the Father and the 
Son, Original Sin, the Atonement, Hell. These 
figments are not in accord with the genius of 
modern thought. It is the remark of an astute 
author of our day, that the age which has given 
birth to societies for the Prevention of Cruelty 
to Animals is essentially another era than that 
in wliicli such horrible conceptions of the Deity 
and his sentient creation could be accepted with 
devout faith in every direction. "Where formerly 
a few scattered thinkers grew into a perception 
of the irrationality of believing such things, it is 
now a characteristic of the general mind to break 
the leading-strings of the past and rise rapidly to 
that perception. This fact is very manifest in 
the utterances of the press, and in the common 
social intercourse of our day. It had begun to 
show itself at the time I am speaking of; but it 
is much more evident now than it was then. 
There was, as I have said, an innate repugnance 



Through Home On. 89 

in my mind to the fundamental principles of 
Augustine's and Calvin's theology. It was the 
bald unrighteousness of the " scheme of salva- 
tion" that gave me pain. If I could have avoid- 
ed seeing the injustice of the damnation imag- 
ined, I might perhaps have been able to shut my 
eyes to the defects and contradictions of the 
" salvation " proposed as its partial remedy : as 
it was, all this part of the church doctrine was 
paiuful to me, though, because it was church 
doctrine, I felt bound to receive it. The horrors 
of theology are brought to a focal point in the 
doctrine of Hell. This is generally among the 
earliest of the tenets of faith, if not the very first 
one, to be rejected when a mind once allows 
itself to reason freely on the subject of religion. 
I cannot say how long I had been a Catholic 
when the doctrine began to trouble me ; but I 
think not many months. Of course I tried to 
smother my reluctation, and prayed against it as 
coming from the Evil One. Meeting by some 
accident with the published controversy between 
Ezra Styles Ely, Presbyterian, and Abel C. 
Thomas, Universalist, on the subject of Future 
Punishment, I could not resist the temptation to 
read the book, which was small and soon finished. 
This was the first presentment of any* regular 
argument against the Orthodox Hell that I met 
with. TJniversalists, I will here remark, are very 



90 Through Rome On. 

strong on tlie moral side of their argument, but 
wer.k on the scriptural side, and fatally weak in 
the admission with which they used commonly 
to start, of the authority of the Bible to deter- 
mine the question. 

It was only by the most rigorous assertion of 
my will, aided by the ascetic resources familiar 
to devout Christians in such cases, that I suc- 
ceeded in repressing for the time, and from time 
to time as they arose, the struggles of my mind 
on this troublesome subject. After a certain 
period, I found some relief and made a kind of 
compromise with my understanding, by avowing 
in conversation that I accepted the Hell doctrine 
implicitly on the authority of the Church ; but 
was unable to see any other reason for believing 
it.* !N"o better way than this, literal subterfuge 

^ A friend to whom I said this asked me if the doc- 
trine were not taught in the Bible. I replied that I 
thought there were no passages of Scripture which, sub- 
jected to private judgment, necessarily taught it. The 
error of Universalists seems to be in insisting that what 
they call Universal Restoration is clearly deducible from 
the Scriptures. In truth, while one's interpretation of 
Bible texts is generally shaped by one's prepossessions in 
each particular case, an impartial inquirer can hardly 
fail to see that some parts of the Bible deny Immortality 
altogether, and other parts really convey the popular no- 
tion of Hell ; leaving a few texts in both Testaments 
which are fairly susceptible of the XJniversalist construc- 
tion. 



Through Home On. 91 

as it was, seems to have been open to me then ; 
but the relief was only partial, the compromise 
bj no means satisfactory : the disgrace of holding 
the foul libel on God and man burned in me like 
a cancer all the time. The doctrine of Purga- 
tory, making a break in the broad diabolism of 
the "scheme," was some comfort; but as this 
provides for only a small part of imperfect man- 
kind, the fate of the remainder still left Chris- 
tianity repugnant to my sense of justice, my rev- 
erence and love for the Supreme Being, and my 
human sympathies. The. Catholic distinction 
between human merit, as entitling to a temporal 
reward, and supernatural merit by divine grace, 
entitling to an eternal recompense, was, like 
Purgatory, in some degree consoling. While 
availing myself to the utmost of all such modifi- 
cations of the Catholic faith, I was never able to 
follow the example of many of my fellow-chris- 
tians in blinding myself to the legitimate conse- 
quences of the doctrine I was obliged to receive. 
I saw with a cruel clearness that Protestants 
must be lost in the world to come, along with a 
vast proportion of Catholics : the former, for 
want of the true faith, wliich is before all things 
necessary to salvation,^ as well as for those sins 
which it is so extremely hard to avoid commit- 

» Athanasian Creed. Creed of Pope Pius IV. 



92 Through Home On. 

ting even in the Church, and with all the spirit- 
ual helps which Catholics, and Catholics alone, 
can resort to ;^ the latter, because of the narrow- 
ness and difficulty of the way to heaven, and the 
fewness of the chosen and the saved.^ I saw, 
and could not help despising, the absurdity of 
the plea of " invincible ignorance" for good men 
out of the Church, and of claiming this class as 
v-irtual Catholics. I saw that there can be no 
effectual goodness out of the Church, with its 
treasures of merits, its fountains of grace, its su- 
pernatural life (our sole deliverance from the 
curse and corruption that deprive us of heaven), 
its one true faith, without which it is impossible 
to please God,^ and which unless a man doth keep 
entire and inviolate he shall without doubt perish 
everlastingly.^ I saw that belief and definite 
profession are Christ's own terms for escaping 
damnation, faithfully repeated by the Church. I 
perceived that the Apostle but followed his Lord 
in classing heresies with the works of the flesh, 
of wliich they that are guilty cannot inherit the 
kingdom of God.^ Helped by the reasonings of 

» 1 Pet iv. 17, 18. 

2 Matt. vii. 14 ; xix. 25. Luke xiii. 24 ; xviii, 26. 
St. Remigius, St. Alphonsus Liguori, &c., on this sub- 
ject, passim, 

3 Heb. xi. 6. ^ Atlianasian Creed. 
5 Gal. V. 19, 20, 21. II Pet. ii. 1. 



Through Rome On, 93 

stauncli Catholic theologians, I saw, as I could 
hardly have failed to see without such help, that 
if an apparently good man is a Protestant, it is 
an indication that God knows him to be unfit for 
the grace of the true faith, the muniment of sal- 
vation. I saw, in short, that if the Catholic reli- 
gion he true, heresy is mortal sin, whatever vir-* 
tues may to human eyes invest the heretic. But 
the gravamen of the difficulty was in the exist- 
ence of Hell itself, as a place of endless torments 
for a portion of Grod's creatures. I could not 
help feeling, in spite of all the pious resistance 
of my will, that this is opposed to the conception 
of a perfectly holy Creator and Euler of the 
Universe. Apart from the special sympathy we 
feel for friends and acquaintances, there is noth- 
ing more horrible in the damnation of one man 
or class of men than of another. The blot upon 
the character of the God of theology is not that 
he damns men for rejecting his revelation, but 
that he damns them at all. When we once take 
in the unspeakably horrible sense of damnation 
in the Christian teaching, the shock is, not that 
Protestants, idolaters, and infidels are damned as 
such; but that sentient creatures of God, living, 
moving, and being in Him, and incapable of any 
act or thought without Him, are by His fiat con- 
signed to such a fate when their fleeting span is 
ended here. While, then, the destiny of persons 



94: Through Rome On, 

out of tlie Clmrch, including my own nearest 
and dearest relations, was to me a source of per- 
petual disquietude, the trouble lay deeper still, 
and, impinging as it did upon the whole theory 
of the Fall of man, the wrath of God, and the 
purchased and limited salvation through Christ, 
was beyond the reach of the conventional conso- 
lations in vogue among my fellow-christians. I 
think I should have been much comforted if I 
had met then, instead of many years later, with 
the view which so startled American Catholics 
when it was put forth with the freshness and 
sturdy eloquence which to the last distinguished 
the veteran editor of BrownsorCs Heview^ that 
the eternity of the sensible torments of hell is 
not a part of the positive dogma of the Catholic 
Church. I confess that I had no knowledge or 
thought of such a view till it was broached by 
the Reviewer ten years after my emancipation 
and full deliverance from the gloom and horrors 
of the miscalled Gospel. 

I remember reading Mr. JMiles's tale The 
Governess with lively interest. The death of 
Jessie touched me; but I could not help making 
the reflection, that it was the human qualities 
and circumstances of the dear girl that made her 

1 Dr. Brownson died in April, 1876; having closed the 
Last Series of his matchless Review the preceding October. 



Through Rome On. 95 

an object of tender pity. She might have been 
a Protestant, and just as good and lovable. 
Catholic story-writers have in their religion a 
line field for the exercise of their aesthetic imag- 
inations. They find in the Church the same 
inspiration that the lover finds in his mistress; 
and their Catholic scenes are as glowing as the 
verse of Petrarch. But like the lover they dream 
and exaggerate and overlook much. Thus they 
draw touching pictures of life, make their heroes 
and heroines Catholics, place them in situations 
which enlist our sympathies in the highest de- 
gree in their behalf, and then claim for them as 
Catholics^ the admiration and love which are 
due to them as human beings. Mr. Miles could 
use his pen as deftly as any in this strain. Jes- 
sie, a sweet young Catholic, dies ; and we weep 
over the sharp trouble she had during her life, 
and her childlike innocence in death. "We are 
transported by our feelings into the invisible 
world to which her spirit has flown, and seem to 
see her among the blessed angels, freed from 
pain forever. We remember Christ's words. Of 
such is the kingdom of heaven ; and rejoice that 
she has come unto him at last, and found in his 
bosom a rest which the storms and troubles of 
earth have no power to invade. And then we 
think of the Church that prepared her for Christ 
and the angels by baptism and the spiritual sus- 



96 ThroiigJi Rome On, 

tenance of holy things ; that consoled her with 
counsel and promise under the trials of her young 
existence; that comforted her dying pillow with 
words of absolution and hope ; and that did not 
forsake her in death, but followed her to the 
grave with blessing and to the bourn beyond 
with prayer. The contemplation of this devoted 
Mother washes our hearts with tenderness, and 
in the moistened soil an ardent faith takes root : 
we are Catholics, exulting in our religion, and 
feeling that it is indeed the way of life and the 
gate of heaven. Such is the intention of the 
Catholic artist in drawing these affecting pictures; 
but if he is logician as well as artist, he must 
perceive that as an argument for the truth of the 
Catholic religion, they will not bear the test of 
cool examination. In this light they are obvi- 
ously unsound, for the simple reason, that they 
are as applicable to one form of faith and prac- 
tice as another. Doubtless Catholicism excels 
in the extent and versatility of its spiritual forces. 
It unquestionably exceeds all other Christian 
bodies, as well in the vastness of its machinery, 
as in the skill and experience with which it 
makes use of its varied appliances. But though 
these advantages may give it a general superior- 
ity over Protestantism in the accessories of a 
moving tableau ; yet as to the main centre and 
substance in a matter of this kind, the two stand 



Through Home On, 97 

on common ground, and, the appeal to human 
sympathy once successfully made, Protestantism, 
bemg less exchisive than its rival, has less to 
fear from a reaction. I could not help the re- 
flection that the character of Jessie was but a 
lively presentation of human innocence, grace 
and suffering ; that these qualities are shared 
by Protestants and heathen equally with Cath- 
olics; that Grace Kennedy and other writers 
had portrayed similar scenes from a Protestant 
point of view, which had moved me not less than 
these from the Catholic pen of Mr. Miles. And 
then would follow the thought, absorbing all the 
poetry of the tale, and bringing the reaction I 
just now spoke of, that it was only for my fellow- 
members of the household of faith that my lov- 
ing sympathies might flow unrestrained. Jessie 
the Catholic was pure and sweet in life and in 
death. She had lived by faith and partaken of 
the food of angels. "Her remains breathed the 
odour of sanctity, and her Heavenly Father had 
crowned her soul above with the unfading gar- 
lands of eternity. But had Jessie not been a 
Catholic, she would have been only an unfortu- 
nate little girl, ill-fated alike for this world and 
the next. Had she been the child of Quaker 
parents and consequently unbaptised, she must 
have been banished forever from the presence of 
God and the society of the blessed above. Dy- 



98 Through Rome On, 

ing nnregenerate, she could never have roamed 
hand in hand with the elect children through 
"the infinite meadows of heaven," but would 
have been favoured indeed, according to Catholic 
doctrine, if her doom had been no worse than 
eternal banishment from Paradise without the 
sensible torments of Hell. In the more fortu- 
nate condition of the offspring of paedobaptists, 
she might perhaps have been saved by water and 
the spirit; but tliis chance of salvation would 
have been very doubtful if she had died after ten 
or twelve a Protestant. Out of the Church no 
Salvation is positive Catholic doctrine ; and the 
possibility of salvation in the case of a person 
who dies at years of respousibility without the 
Catholic faith is so extremely remote, and so 
against the inflexible deductions of reason from 
Catholic principles, that I can hardly conceive of 
a person who is at once of lively faith and acute 
vigorous intellect, as sincerely believing in it ; 
though a multitude of Catholics, who would go 
mad if compelled to follow out the inexorable 
logic of the case, find comfort in the permission 
accorded them by the Church to hope and pray 
in private for their relations and friends who 
have died externs, and to trust that the plea of 
"invincible ignorance" is accepted by God in 
excuse for their failure to receive his true reli- 
gion ; and that notwithstanding the difiiculty of 



Through Rome On. 99 

being saved in the Chiircli, and with all the ap- 
pliances which she provides for her faithful chil- 
dren, God will so far relax his law and order as 
to admit these outside wanderers into a partici- 
pation of the ineffable joys prepared for his elect 
in heaven. This comfort, amounting often to 
confidence, I could only envy my fellow-Catho- 
lics. I could not avail myself of it like them. 
To me the horrible conviction would continually 
recur, that the souls of my dearest relations and 
friends were for heresy and unbelief crushed 
down under the curse of God and abandoned 
eternally to torments and despair. I vainly tried 
to exorcise and turn away from such dreadful 
images: they had the persistency of Banquo's 
ghost, and would not down. I could not bear 
to speak of these thoughts. Hid Hke devouring 
fires in my heart, they burned on. 



There were two strong working sides to my 
mind at this time : the side of reverence and de- 
votion, which contended for the faith ; and the 
side of moral soundness and intellectual activity, 
which was undermining the faith all the time. 
The former, with all its power, was never able 
to command the latter — ^' Hitherto and no far- 
ther." IsTaturally conservative, I clung to " the 
fair humanities of old religion " as long as it was 



100 Through Rome On, 

possible to persuade myself that I was still a be- 
liever. Ah this believing you believe ! How 
many mistake it for genuine faith, and go on all 
their lives hugging the delusion. And how 
many, too, even in this sceptical age, are totally 
unable to form any adequate conception of such 
a conflict as I am relating, and by their pecuhar 
organisation and experience are compelled to 
misjudge a case like mine, so impossible to them, 
that they unconsciously apply to it the unjust 
weights and false balance which in the language 
of their own scripture are an abomination to the 
Lord.^ 



I had certainly taken up the cross in becoming 
a Christian. Self-denial and penance in their 
physical forms were not grievous to me. I could 
have gone on forever with such things, and never 
ceased to find the happiness of my first consecra- 
tion to God and the faith in these modes of exer- 
cising repentance, humility, and grateful devo- 
tion. As long as my religion sanctified only 
really high or else indifferent things, and de- 
manded but the sacrifice of fieshly inclinations, 

^ This thought has been very justly expressed by Pro- 
fessor Newman in the Preface to his Phases of Faith; 
which probably conveyed the first suggestion of it to my 
mind, many years ago. 



Through Borne On, 101 

both flesh and spirit were willing and strong to 
obey. I could give up tlie pride of life as well 
as its pleasures, and not only endure with pa- 
tient submission the unavoidable afflictions that 
befell me, but embrace, in the spirit of penance, 
mortifications which 1 might have spared myself 
without sin. All this was easy to me for God's 
sake and in view of eternal life. But there was 
another requisition of religion with which it was 
neither easy nor possible for me to comply, 
though I struggled long, by means of my own 
will and of all the resources which religion af- 
forded, to do so. I could not accept wrong for 
right at the dictate of another mind ; could not, 
on any consideration, say that that was right 
which my own interior conviction, in spite of 
every opposing influence, persisted in pronoun 
cing wrong. At first I did not perceive that re- 
ligion demanded this of me. There was such 
fulness of joy in the first fruits of my Catholic 
conversion, that I saw nothing but the brightness 
of the sanctuary in which I worshipped. Then 
came the passing shadow, " a little cloud out of 
the sea like a man's hand." But the brightness 
swallowed up the cloud ; for I was young, and 
how can youth think of what is in a cloud, with 
the light of its ravishing vision all around ? My 
dream was to last for years ; but with each fresh 
year came more enlargement of a mind that 



102 Through Home On. 

could continue its dreaming only until a certain 
point in its growth was reached. (I do not say, 
pious reader, that it was a hetter mind than 
yours : I say only that it was a different mind ; 
and you perhaps are as glad of the difference as 
I am.) My study of history (by Catholic writers 
as well as others) compelled certain involuntary 
conclusions which were not consonant with the 
theory of the Church, nor with any theory which 
would save the Church or supernaturalism from 
condemnation. The same result followed from 
what I learned of both physical and moral sci- 
ence. It was not in my power to repudiate 
these conclusions at the bidding of any authority. 
I did not in any special matter decide that the 
Church was wrong ; at least I made no conscious 
admission of it. The immediate working of the 
conclusions w^as not so much against particular 
doctrines of the Church as against the general 
animus of supernaturalist conceptions. " Prov- 
idential" views of history, " design" views of cre- 
ation, demonism and miracle views concerning 
man and nature, in short, the whole pseudo- 
philosophy of theological teaching, I was irre- 
sistibly coming to feel radically unsound, out of 
date, and sickening. The process I am describ- 
ing was a renewing of my mind, a gradual pro- 
gress out of its childish habitudes which had al- 
lowed of religious faith. It was an unpurposed 



Through Borne On, 103 

and nncontrollable mental sloughing, ordained 
by nature, and predestined to run its entire 
course in spite of any resistance that wish or will 
could offer. Will has indeed no more right of 
dominion over intellect than over conscience; 
and the profession of religion is maintained by a 
continued tyranny of the first over the other two. 
I tried the common way, but it was not in me to 
go on with it : the principle of it was no princi- 
ple for me. My reason and conscience were 
never antagonistic, though reason and inclina- 
tion, partiality, often were. Partiality might 
mislead conscience for a while ; but it always 
had to loose its hold when reason spoke clearly 
against it. Beason's voice always commanded 
the ear of conscience ; and what it uttered was 
thenceforth a part of conscience itself. To vio- 
late reason was to violate conscience : to slight 
reason was to slight and offend conscience. 
What was a difficulty to reason was a difficulty 
to conscience too ; and conscience would not let 
me shut my eyes to such things and go on, would 
not let me run away from them to entrench my- 
self in the citadel of faith, as religious counsellors 
advise. This kind of immorality was indeed 
scarcely open to me ; for even the citadel of 
faith, as reason-proof as it is commonly found 
to be, was helplessly pervious to the spirit that 
wrestled with me night and day. Beason's light 



104 Through Rome On. 

had brouglit me to the point I had attained. I 
could not put out the light and relume it at 
pleasure, as many seem to think they can. The 
new habit of mind was surely fitting itself to me 
in place of the old. Anticatholic and antichris- 
tian facts and necessary deductions were con- 
stantly forcing themselves upon me. I found 
my thoughts taking shapes which have since 
been set forth with very curious felicitousness by 
Canon Pullen in a little book called Christian' 
ity a Civilised heathenism, I began to feel 
that society and human life not only were not, 
but could not be, squared with the supernatural- 
ist theory. It was hardly possible to avoid say- 
ing, with a shiver, that they ought not to be. 
The supernatural life was not led ; the supernat- 
ural religion was not attested by its proper 
supernatm*al effects. More than this: the nature 
that we were endowed with led us away from 
that life, and inspired us with a sense of the im- 
practicableness of that religion. Drawing its 
forces from another existence, and placing man's 
true destiny in that invisible and untried sphere, 
Keligion necessarily depreciates this poor world 
where we are now in exile and probation ; and 
enjoins the depreciation upon its disciples ; who 
must, from the very beginning of their spiritual 
life in baptism, renounce the world and their 
own flesh, along with the Devil ; and vow them- 



Through Home On, 105 

selves to life-long warfare with the three, as ene- 
mies of God and their salvation. Salvation — in 
the technical sense — is man's only affair; and 
this is imperilled by caring for the things of 
earth and time. This teaching, which is so im- 
perative from the supernatm-alist point of view, 
lowers and weakens the practical side of life, as 
we plainly see in the examples of men and na- 
tions that have embraced it most heartily. Such 
examples, in which earth is sacrificed for the se- 
cm-ing of heaven, are the triumph of religion and 
the mark of divine calling and election. Men 
who trample upon the interests and joys of time* 
are the truly religious and predestinate ones. 
The genuine Christian has a contempt for the 
concerns of our mortal career. Science, art, the 
industries and refinements, the enjoyments and 
sweet affections of life lead away from the only 
good. The temporal depression of CathoKc 
countries beside Protestant ones is an indication 
of the greater consistency of the Catholic reli- 
gion. Protestantism stands for both worlds, and 
tries to make the most of the one it is in while 
it plans and prays for the other also. Cathol- 
icism shows us a more excellent way. Protest- 
ants have no holy virginity, nor vows, nor pen- 
ance, nor miraculous altar ; but enjoy the worldly 
advantages of power, prosperity, and ease, in a 
large degree. The Catholic, seeing this, says, 



106 Through Home On. 

Let them have those things, which are no mark 
of the Divine favour. Thej are of the world, 
therefore speak they of the world, and tlie world 
heareth them. We are of God. Hereby know 
we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 
This apostolic mode of judging' is consistent and 
consoling. The Spanish sovereigns who so cru_ 
elly and blindly drove out their Moorish and 
Jewish subjects, were consistent Christians. So 
was Louis XIY. a consistent Christian in banish- 
ing the Huguenots from France. So have all 
the crusading and dragooning of believing 
-princes and people against useful and worthy 
infidels, in different climes and ages, been con- 
sistent with the principle that the true religion 
and the world to come are the only things worth 
caring for, or that we are at liberty to care for. 
"Worldly prosperity is delusive and ensnaring. 
The people or the individual caring for it is 
turned away from God and salvation. "After 
such things do the Gentiles seek." Welcome 
maceration of flesh and spirit, welcome poverty 
and shame, welcome national inferiority and de- 
cay ; for these show the following of Him whose 
kingdom and teaching are not of this world. I 
had learned this lesson well. What business of 
mine was it to labour for the food that perisheth? 
What had I to do with gainful occupations, or 

1 I John iv. 5, 6. 



Through Borne On. 107 

■with meny-makings, or natural affections, or anj 
other " things of the world " which I was forbid- 
den to love, and which I had solemDlj renounced 
to follow Christ and obtain heaven ? I saw that 
hermits and cenobites and servants of the altar 
were in the likeliest way ; but I was instructed 
that some Christians were called to live in the 
world \ and that divine grace was sufficient for 
them in that vocation. But no Christian was to 
be ^the world. I understood my duty of being 
in the world as if I were not (9/" it ; of being sev- 
ered from worldly affinities, of practising intoler- 
ance for God's sake toward whatsoever and who- 
soever opposed the order of grace and the 
revealed doctrine. So, when I saw men despis- 
ing human wisdom in their devotion to the teach- 
ings of faith, I perceived that they were super- 
naturally wise and right. But alas 1 I discerned 
not less clearly that they were naturally foolish 
and wrong. I saw how such courses affected 
society and the whole temporal order. I saw 
the kind of history they made, the present fruits 
they bore, and the philosophy of them. Well 
was it that their final supernatural consequences 
were to be so different ; for on earth they were 
ruinous, and if the result were not to be reversed 
in heaven, strict Christians were indeed, as St. 
Paul said, of all men Tnost miserable,^ I saw 
» I Cor. XV. 19. 



108 Through Rome On. 

that science accounted for miracles, that the pro- 
gress of man exploded scriptural and ecclesiasti- 
cal legends, and put the stamp of superstition 
upon the faith of earlier generations in such 
things ; and that to believe them now was puer- 
ile, while to reject them savoured of impiety 
still. It grew plainer and plainer that goodness 
was human and natural, and not bounded by 
creed limits ; that my conscience could not be 
safe and sound but in my own keeping. I saw 
too much ever to repose in Christianity again. 
Of course I ought to have put out the offending 
eyes of my mind, and plunged on to heaven's 
gate, eyeless, mindless, with nothing but my soul 
left, if so be God would only take that in. This 
was my Christian duty; but somehow, grace 
failed me to perform it effectually. I only 
prayed, and struggled, and staggered under the 
weight of the cross. 



My decatholicisation was a very gradual pro- 
cess indeed. Bit by bit, and without my knowing 
it, the supernatural fabric crumbled away. Point 
after point was established against it, in spite of 
vaj resistance and of my partiality for the failing 
cause. I would gladly have seen it prevail, but 
it had not virtue enough in itself to abide the 
test, and it was not possible for me to avoid ap- 



Through Home On. 109 

plying the test, nor to be unmoved by the results. 
I was, as I may say, a reader and thinker by na- 
ture. The practice of my religion itself continu- 
ally supplied material for scepticism (in the true 
and high sense of the word) to work on. The 
name and writings of St. Alphonsus Liguori 
stand very high in the Catholic Church, and the 
faithful are constantly exhorted to resort to them 
as a fountain of edification. Having gone to this 
source in all devotion, I presently became pain- 
fully aware that the great saint, however ex- 
alted his spirituality may have been, was grossly 
superstitious, and given to the peddling of pueril- 
ities which it is mental degradation to teach or 
to believe. I fairly broke down under the story 
of the " demon with a stick in his hand," who 
" appeared " to a young man that had neglected 
to bend his knee at the words homo f actus est 
in the Creed, " and wounded him severely"; and 
that of the wicked man who was slain with *an 
axe in the public square by a " frightful spectre" 
from hell.' And I knew that it was unchristian 
in me to turn away in disgust from these narra- 
tives instead of becoming as a little child and 
stultifying myself to believe them. Again : in 

^ St. Alphonsus Liguori On tlie Sacraments and Com- 
mandments : 4th. ed. Boston : Thomas Sweeney, 1849. 
Pages 38 and 61. 



110 Through Rome On. 

the movements and changes which several years 
brought about, I had more than one confessor ; 
and a certain Jesuit father who presided over 
my conscience for a time took occasion once to 
recommend to my perusal a little book contain- 
ing a minute description of the pains of hell; 
which had an effect which must have been very 
different from that intended by my reverend 
director. This department of ascetic writing 
had for some time been known to me ; but it 
belonged to my Catholic obedience to give spe- 
cial heed to the work commended to me by my 
confessor ; and thus the dose had powerful effect, 
though not according to the prognosis of the 
spiritual physician. I had kept the faith hith- 
erto by cherishing the gentler, better part of 
religion, and passively allowing the rest. Com- 
pelled now to dwell in detail upon the most hor- 
rible of all the Christian conceptions, I could no 
longer close my eyes to their monstrous unrea- 
sonableness. I thought of many persons whom 
I had known, and who, according to the doctrine 
that I was now required to chew and taste and 
swallow as daily bread, were undergoing un- 
speakable torments, such as Eastern tyrants, 
!N"orth- American Indians, and religious persecu- 
tors in every clime have delighted to inflict, and 
as humane and enlightened mankind turn away 
from with loathing and indignation in every 



Through Roine On. Ill 

form save that in which, theology has hallowed 
and handed them down from the cruel times of 
old. I knew that such a fate for my acquaint- 
ances could not be just ; knew it as certainly as 
I knew that justice is eternally opposed to injus- 
tice, and that our moral instincts are not a mock 
and a delusion. And as to my own case, instead 
of being cast down by a sense of my sinfulness 
and deadly peril, under this dreadful teaching, I 
was moved by it to quite the opposite state of 
mind. I felt that, whatever my shortcomings 
and wrongdoing, I was not bad enough to be 
the companion of devils for one moment even, 
to say nothing of an incomputable eternity. I 
had often acknowledged most sincerely that I 
was not good enough for heaven : I should have 
been less honest if in this crisis I had refused to 
say that I was too good for hell. I never could 
make myself fit for either place. It may have 
been fanciful, but it was not revolting, to think 
that God would in his great power and love 
make me fit for heaven : could I, however, with- 
out blasphemy, suppose that he would — that 
anything could induce him to — exert his power 
to fit me for hell ? The attempt to overpower 
my soul with a cowardly selfishness and terror 
was in itself — I do not speak now of the pious 
blunderer who made it with me — base, and fool- 
ish, as base, for such a bubble ai'gument cannot 



112 Through Rome On. 

bear the touch of cool sense for an instant. To 
bring forward distempered visions of the cloister 
as authentic accounts of the imagined Healm of 
Despair is of a piece with the whole character of 
the doctrine. The book recommended by my 
confessor did not promote piety, but it struck a 
great blow at faith. ITor was this effect lessened 
by St. Liguori's explanation of the precept of 
charity ; in which he declares : " We cannot 
love the damned : we on the contrary are obliged 
to hate them as the eternal enemies of God." 
This religion of terror and hate was not for me. 
It is easy to understand how it nerved the arm 
of fiery persecution in a believing age, as well as 
what cruel perversions and mischiefs it may still 
work in individual cases where something like 
the faith of yore is yet able to flourish. 

Eut are these silly fables and perverting coun- 
sels really matters of faith, so that one cannot 
reject them and be a good Catholic Christian 
still ? That they have never been solemnly en- 
joined upon all the faithful by a General Coun- 
cil, or by the infallible Pontiff from his chair, 
may be true ; though when one remembers that 
they have been constantly propounded and pro- 
mulgated the world over by the most approved 
and honoured teachers, under sanction of the 
guardians of the faith, that they have never been 
censured by the central authority, and that they 



Through Rome On. 113 

have been most devoutly believed and acted on 
in those times and places in which the teachings 
of faith have had widest scope and dominion, it 
seems too much to affirm that they are not part 
and parcel of the doctrine of the Church. But 
let it be granted that they are not positive doc- 
trine, that one may deny them without formal 
heresy. On this assumption I have still no hes- 
itation in saying that a person cannot be a thor- 
oughly good Catholic Christian and reject them. 
A thoroughly good Catholic must be imbued 
with the spirit of the Catholic religion, and must 
not sacrifice that spirit in any degree at any 
worldly or natural prompting whatever. That 
spirit is one of humility and submission, of self- 
abnegation, of the chastening of the pride of 
intellect and will by bending these faculties be- 
fore superiors, especially before authorised teach- 
ers of religion. The more the natural mind 
relucts against such abjection, the greater the 
obligation to overcome nature and yield. The 
man who must go on watering the dry stick that 
it may miraculously flower, the monk whose son 
is scourged before his eyes to try his submission 
and renunciation of natural affection, the Jesuit 
who is trained to be jperinde ac cadaver^ "just 
like a corpse," in the hands of his superiors, are 
all true illustrations of the spirit of the Catholic 
religion ; which would make each disciple war 



114 Through Hovie On. 

against nature and self-will in himself by almost 
deifying those qualities in other men. The 
habit of mind which rejects such fables and con- 
ceits as I have mentioned is contrary to this 
spirit, and tends to heresy, though the rejection, 
of any specific modern miracle or notion is not 
an act of formal heresy. He who rejects such 
things opposes himself in his pride of intellect 
and will to the current of Catholic belief and 
teaching from the earliest times. Of course a 
thoroughly good Catholic will not do this. 



Devotional piety will go a great way ; but 
unless it so saturates and possesses one as to 
render him a fanatic, he will have many cool 
moments in which his judgment will work 
according to its normal function. Woe to reli- 
gion if in such moments the objects of faith and 
devotion are scanned with the bold clear eyesight 
used for other things. Viewed repeatedly in 
this way, the objects lose the glamour with which 
they at first beguiled tlie mind, and, not all 
at once, but by degrees, are retired below the 
surface, or else so positively rejected that their 
former place and power are lost to them forever. 
Quite commonly, people keep them apart, for a 
distinct kind of contemplation by themselves; 
but when they are looked at as other matters are, 



Through Rome On. 115 

the result is what I have said. I could no more 
help going on in an undercurr n of scepticism, 
getting continuall}^ stronger as it ran, than I 
could help drawing my breath. I did not under- 
stand the process then, nor suspect how it would 
end ; but from time to time I felt it to be uncanny 
in a Christian, and yet could no more help it, 
as I have said, than my breathing or the beating 
of my heart. It was only through the force of 
the enormous presumption raised in my mind 
on the side of the Church that I could bear up 
for years against the contradiction of its theory 
which history supplies. Then came natural and 
moral philosophy, and that spirit of the age 
which is born with us now, and all through life is 
entering to become part of us, with every breath 
and through every pore. The unappeasable con- 
tradiction of all these to the teaching and spirit 
of the faith made the gradual and sure revolution 
in my mind, without my knowing it till it was 
so effectually done tliat I could no more return 
to Christian belief than I could to the physio- 
logical conditions of my infancy. It would be 
impossible, I think, if it were desirable, to re- 
count each step and stage of the course which 
led to this goal, or to analyse my mental and 
spiritual state when it was reached. The faith 
was always one to me. Though, as I have re- 
lated, some parts of it affected my instincts very 



116 Through Rome On, 

differently from others, and tliouo^h it is not to 
be doubted that the nature of those particular 
tenets had an important bearing on the result, 
and it may even be true to saj in regard to 
them, that from the moment of their first clear 
presentment to mj understanding, I did not really 
believe, but only tried to believe, and thought 
I was believing ; yet it is certain that I never 
consciously rejected one of the doctrines to go 
on holding the rest. The foundation had been 
too well laid for such a paralogism as this 
would have involved to be possible. I rejected 
the faith as I had received it, in its totality, and 
as false in its very foundations. When I arrived 
at this consummation, the fabric that reason and 
conscience had besieged so long was indeed in a 
crumbling state and ready to fall ; but I did not 
know it till the last, though each ringing blow 
in its reduction had sounded against my very 
heart. It toppled all at once, and I stepped 
forth from its ruins wounded and sore indeed, 
but rejoicing to be free. This deliverance came 
either in 1851 or early in the succeeding year. 
In the State Library, on a certain day, the con- 
viction came to me that I was not, and never 
could be again, a Christian believer. For me, 
Christianity and Roman Catholicism are one 
and the same. In Catholicism I find the proper 
development and sole tolerable fulfilment of the 



Through Rome On. 117 

Christian idea. I do not say a perfect fulfil- 
ment ; but tlie only plausible approach to a ful- 
filment that! can discern on earth. Protestant- 
ism is a wider and wider departure ; and under 
its more religious forms is a weak metaphysis of 
Catholicism, utterly failing to satisfy after (as 
also in my case before) that, meshed in the 
prime fallacies and falsities proved against that, 
and quite unable to stand if that must fall. It 
is as the little sister spoken of in Solomon's 
Song : *' Soror nostra parva^ et ubera non hahet : 
quid faciemus sorori nostrae in die quando al- 
loquenda est V^ 



There often seem to be marvellous simplicity 
and inevitableness in results which after all had 
to be reached slowly, gradually, and by a round- 
about process. I could not attain to the salva- 
tion of Free Thought till the principle of the old 
religions was for me completely exhausted. This 
was done in Christianity, of which Roman Cath- 
olicism is the regular development and culmi- 
nation. Shallow Protestantism was quickly left 
behind. Catholicism held me for some years ; 
and then, when the resistless tendencies of my 
mind, informed by increasing knowledge and 
experience, turned that inside out and compelled 
its abandonment, with it all Supernatm-ahsm fell 



118 Through Borne On. 

off from me as a worn-out garment. Such is my 
mental framework that I could never blink a real 
argument, nor turn aside from any legitimate 
conclusion. A principle once adopted, I had 
to think it out to the last result, had to ac- 
cept every jot and tittle of all that it involved; 
— or give it up, if it would not stand that crucial 
test of its soundness. In this way, Supernatural- 
ism was demonstrated false by being worked out till 
it stood revealed in contradiction to indubitable 
truths in nature and experience. Then, going 
back with purged eyesight to the starting-point 
of my religious premises, I found that these had 
been assumed, not proved, and that, touched 
with Ithuriel's spear, they melted into thinnest 
air. I had assumed, or had accepted the assump- 
tion of others, that there is a Supernatural Reve- 
lation on earth from the Supreme Being, impart- 
ed through an infallible Oracle, for the instruc- 
tion and salvation of mankind. Finding Protest- 
antism unable to supply an adequate basis for 
this assumption and palpably destitute of oracu- 
lar authority, I had taken leave of it like ^neas 
fleeing from Troy, not leaving my gods behind, 
but setting my face Homeward with fresh devo- 
tion and hope. Captivated by the more plaus- 
ible pretensions of Catholicism, I had accepted 
its grounds, not indeed without examination, as at 
first with the Oracle, but after a very insufficient 



Through Rome On. 119 

scrutiny, witli my mind already committed to the 
favourable conclusion. I had not investigated 
Catholicism in the independent light of reason. 
It was not to be expected of me at that immature 
period of life, and in the special circumstances. 
Hampered by the theory of the Oracle, I had 
compared Catholicism and Protestantism as rival 
claimants of oracular authority, and had been so 
carried away by the vast superiority of the former 
in this point of view^ as virtually to forego further 
inquiry; and, while I thought myself still an 
investigator, had taken on faith what was at last 
as proofless and as opposed to the facts of the 
case as the claims of dogmatic Protestantism 
even. It is indeed a simpler task to expose the 
fallacy "svhich grounds Revelation in human tra- 
dition, and claims supernatural authority for a 
confessedly fallible body of men, or for a selec- 
tion of old writings the origins of which are with 
small exception unknown, and the exegesis of 
which is a matter of endless dispute, than it is to 
unravel the maze of moral and historical perver- 
sions with which the papal system clothes and de- 
fends itself to the sophistication of so many minds; 
yet the Church can no more than the Bible main- 
tain itself in the last result; and the mind needs 
only to be completely unhooded to reach this 
result, and to see what wretched stairs of sand it 



120 Through Rome On, 

had mounted to get liold of a principle outside 
of nature. 



I had yielded a passive consent to the claim 
that there is a supernatural Revelation, that 
Christianity is that Eevelation, and that it was 
supernaturally given eighteen hundred years ago. 
Thus was Catholicism palmed upon me for the 
infallible truth of God ; for I saw that the claim 
involves certainty, permanency, and uninterrupt- 
edness ; which no other religious body than the 
Koman Catholic Church can supply. Of course, 
in a broad and fair view of the question, the va- 
lidity of the Catholic claim does not follow from 
the failure of the claims of all the competing re- 
ligions ; since there remains the alternative that 
there is no true claimant in the field ; in other 
words, that the supposed underlying fact of Rev- 
elation is not a real fact. But, as I have said, 
I had from the first assumed the Christian-Rev- 
elation premises ; and so for me, as the case 
stood, the failure of rival Christianity carried 
with it the proof of Catholicism. Accordingly, 
I accepted the papal system without requiring it 
to demonstrate its claims except as against the 
Christian claimants outside of it ; and not till I 
was clothed with the name and habitudes of a 
Catholic did I take up the argument for the di- 



Through Rome On. 121 

vine establishment of Christianity as an historical 
fact. Catholics and Protestants have a common 
starting-point in the beginning of that argument. 
Their starting-point is found in a cluster of as- 
sumptions : that there is a supreme supernatural 
Person ; that man needs a special supernatural 
revelation from Him ; that it is at the outset 
probable He has given such a revelation ; that 
miracles are provable, and that they demonstrate 
the divine character or commission of the mira- 
cle-worker. Having given themselves this start, 
they both undertake to show that Christ and his 
apostles wrought miracles and thus proved the 
divinity of their teaching, which we are conse- 
quently bound to receive. From this point of 
the argument, they diverge, and present conflict- 
ing statements as to the constitution of the Chris- 
tian society and the particulars of the alleged 
divine teaching. Being in love with the Catho- 
lic Christian theory, and imbued with the doc- 
trines and devotional feeline^s of the relimon 
elaborated from it, I did not come to the ^* evi- 
dences " in any critical spirit, but went over them 
with the usual smoothness and docility of the 
Christian disciple whose mind is full of the al- 
ready accepted conclusion. Only some time 
afterwards, when the philosophy of history forced 
itself upon me, and when by contact with real 
evidences, which did not find acceptance through 



122 Through Rome On, 

prejudice, but compelled mj belief in despite of 
prejudice and bj their own power of truth, the 
easy faith of the neophyte was staggered against 
his will, did I begin to have an uncomfortable 
sense of the naturalness (in opposition to super- 
naturalness) of Christian facts and phenomena, 
even the cardinal fact of the fondly conceived 
miraculous foundation. I had been told, by way 
of preliminary distinction, that the mind may 
properly judge of the evidence for the Divine 
establishment of the teaching authority, but not 
of the doctrine propounded by the authority. I 
learned by a slow-working but finally incontro- 
vertible experience, which left no substance or 
life in the specious distinction forevermore, that 
the mind cannot help judging of all that is of- 
fered, doctrine itself, as well as authority for doc- 
trine ; and that no authority can authorise that 
which contradicts what the authority depends on 
for its own recognition. I learned further, upon 
a fair challenge of proofs, that the supposed au- 
■ thority utterly fails to establish itself as a divinely 
commissioned proposer of doctrine. 

In regard to miracles, a subject hardly worth 
arguing nowadays,^ but belonging to the course 

1 *' Whether we attack them, or whether we defend 
them, does not much matter : the human mind, as its ex- 



Through Rome On. 123 

I am tracing : it was abundantlj clear to me, 
that if a miracle were reported to-day as having 
happened a short time ago, we should — the 
wisest and most trustworthy among us certainly 
would — disbelieve it from the first, whatever the 
testimony ; and if upon further consideration we 
saw reason to believe that the occurrence re- 
ported had actually taken place, we should still, 
and to the last, utterly disbelieve in the superna- 
tm*alness attributed to it. There are many sen- 
sible people who, for want of logical training, 
believe readily in marvels related of the past 
which they would at once see to be incredible if 
related of the present. Others, who do not be- 
lieve such things without difficulty, yet constrain 
themselves to a kind of will-faith or profession 
on the subject, as a matter of moral obligation. 
A third class are endowed with such gift of men- 
tal deglutition that possible and impossible, past, 
present, and future, are all one to them, and they 
can believe anything. These three classes, with 
many subdivisions, furnish the believers in mira- 
cles. Other thinking people now, without wait- 
ing for a demonstration of the impossibility of 
miracle in the abstract, find the cumulative ar- 
gument against all alleged miracles, or superna- 

perience widens, is turning away from them." Mat- 
thew Arnold : Literature and Dogma^ p. 135. 



124 Through Home On. 

tural occurrences, absolutely irresistible. Detach, 
the New-Testament miracles from their relio-ious 
connexion, and every person of average intelli- 
gence and education sees that, as simple occur- 
rences even, they are not at all worthy of belief ; 
and, indeed, as depending solely upon the pro- 
bably hearsay testimony of obscure witnesses of 
credulous minds in a credulous age, outside of 
the reach of cross-examination, and without any- 
thing satisfactory in the way of common authen- 
tication, they cannot for a moment sway the con- 
viction of a rational mind that has not already 
admitted them upon other grounds than their 
proper evidence. Every system enjoys the pre- 
possession of its own disciples in its favour ; and 
thus the miracles of each religion are sufficiently 
attested for the disciples of that religion, who, 
however (at least among the enlightened races), 
at the same time reject as fabulous the miracles 
of other religions, though resting on evidence 
similar to that which seems to them so good to 
sustain their own. The kind of evidence which 
commands the Christian's faith in the case of 
Christian miracles will only excite his contempt 
if pleaded in behalf of Hindoo miracles. The 
Catholic can see no credibility in a Protestant 
miracle, nor the Protestant any in a Catholic 
miracle. The reason is not far to seek : the pre- 
possession is absent, in the one case and in the 



Through Home On. 125 

other ; that prepossession which is tlie real ground 
on which the miracle finds acceptance ; that pre- 
possession which makes up for any defect in the 
evidence, which can dispense with evidence, and 
is satisfied with any that is ofiered on its own 
side ; — the side, and not the quality, determining 
the weight that is to he allowed to the proffered 
testimony. The spiritist, full of faith, and, as 
often happens, of a high degree of intelligence, 
is astonished and more than half indignant that 
the overwhelming evidence for the " manifesta- 
tions " does not convince his incredulous neigh- 
bour ; while the latter is moved to disgust at the 
spectacle of one who yields his faith to things so 
intrinsically incredible. Take away the sacred- 
ness of the Scripture miracles, and there is no 
difficulty in seeing that the evidence adduced for 
them is ridiculously below what modern criticism 
demands to establish any extraordinary occur- 
rence in the past. The evidence for some of 
the Catholic miracles in later times is decidedly 
superior to any that can be brought for the mira- 
cles related in the Bible ; yet Protestants, being 
in the most literal sense of the word prejudiced 
in favour of the Bible miracles and against the 
Catholic miracles, pronounce the former suffi- 
ciently vouched for, and laugh the latter to scorn; 
though if miracles were proof of a divine com- 
missioUj as Protestants themselves say, they 



126 Through Home On. 

would be bound to examine the evidence for the 
Catholic miracles; and this they almost invari- 
ably disdain to do. 

I saw, in short, that the presumption is always 
immensely against the truth of an asserted mira- 
cle ; that this presumption can be overcome 
only by very clear proof; and that such proof 
does not exist, but is out of the question, in the 
case of the New-Testament miracles. I saw fur- 
ther, that there is an important difference be- 
tween the reality of a fact and its nature ; i. e., 
its reality is one thing, its natiiralness or super- 
naturalness is another thing. Unless we have 
either supernatural inspiration or a thorough ac- 
quaintance with all the possibilities of nature, we 
cannot know that an ascertained fact is superna- 
tural.' If a man declared to me that he was in- 
spired, I could not argue the matter with him : 
I could only say, that his inspiration, whatever 
it might be worth to him, was purely his, and 

1 See BrownsoTi's Review^ July, 1875, Art. V. ; in which 
a cure through the prayer of a Mormon elder is admitted, 
but its miraculousness denied, with a remark confirma- 
tory of what is said above about the possibilities of na- 
ture ; and observe, that in the same article the Reviewer 
accepts as genuine the miracles wrought at the shrine of 
Our Lady of Lourdes : and then, reader, remember what 
I have said about the side, and not the quality, of the 
miracle-evidence determining its acceptance or rejec- 
tion. 



Through Rome On. 127 

availed me nothing. A thorough acquaintance 
with all the possibilities of nature no man can 
possess or pretend to. Not having this impos- 
sible comprehension of nature, and not being 
supernaturallj inspired, I could not, then, assert 
of any proved fact (much less of something un- 
proved) that it was supernatural. In regard to 
the miracles related in the Bible, the alleged facts 
in the first place are not proved ; and the super- 
naturalness claimed for them would not follow 
if they were proved. Then, continuing to pur- 
sue the argument honestly and freely, I perceived 
that a genuine miracle would be no proof of the 
tnith or trustworthiness of the miracle-worker. 
It would show him to be powerful, but it would 
be no demonstration that he was good and truth- 
ful. That God would not permit a miracle to 
be wrought by a false teacher is sheer assumption. 
We do not know what God would or would not 
permit. The assumption is, moreover, forbidden 
to Bupernaturalists by their doctrine of evil 
spirits with powers not limited by the laws of 
nature ; and by the express words of their Scrip- 
tures in such passages as Ex. vii. 11, 12, 22. 
Deut. xiii. 1, 2, 3, 5. Eev. xiii. 13, 14:, 15 ; xvi. 
14; xix. 20. (See on this point, Arnold of 
Kugby's Life and Correspondence, Letter to Dr. 
Hankin. See also Trench on the Miracles, 
Ch.iii.) 



128 Through Rome On. 

The patent miracle of the establishment of 
Christianity is as plain a natural fact as any- 
other in history. "It may indeed be confidently 
asserted," says Mr. Lecky in his History of 
Morals, " that the conversion of the Horn an Em- 
pire is so far from being of the nature of a mira- 
cle or suspension of the ordinary principles of 
human nature, that there is scarcely any other 
great movement on record in which the causes 
and effects so manifestly correspond." This is 
true ; and Mr. Lecky but expresses the common 
thought of students at the present day when he 
declares it. The old polytheism was dying out 
when Chl-istianity came. The people had out- 
grown it in their minds and hearts to even a 
greater extent than we have outgrown Christian- 
ity to-day ; and the mixture of the various local 
forms of paganism had, at least in the great cen- 
tres of intelligence, worked their mutual destruc- 
tion, and left the craving for a new theory of 
life and religion, which Christianity by a natural 
evolution came forward to supply, with its ap- 
peal to the private conscience and its assertion 
of the divine dominion of one God, correspond- 
ing to the temporal dominion of one imperial 
ruler. The correlation of God and Caesar was a 
very strong point. The fatherhood of God and 
the brotherhood of humanity, a revival of some 
of the most impressive pagan teachings, made 



Through Rome On. 129 

another strong point ; blurred though both these 
elements were from the first by the narrowness 
and strivings of the early Christians. Then 
came Paul, with his hellenising manipulation of 
Christianity, and his magnetic powers of energy 
and persuasion. One may question if it be not 
according too small distinction to Paul to call 
him the second founder of Christianity. That 
religion as it has descended to us is much more 
strongly stamped by him than by any of the 
other apostles, or even by Jesus himself; who, 
in the higliest view that can reasonably be taken 
of his character and work, was but an earnest 
Jewish reformer, one of many unsuccessful claim- 
ants of the messiahship ; who died complaining 
that God had forsaken him, and left behind a 
"little flock " of disciples to form another feeble 
S(5ct among the Jews. Paul renewed and ener- 
gised under a distinctive form the nascent reli- 
gion, separated it forever from Judaism, leavened 
it with Greek and Roman elements, informed it 
with his own fiery zeal, and gave his life at last 
to place it on the road to a royal destiny. Paul 
stands out on' the canvas of history as a real per- 
sonage. Jesus, if he was real, as may well be 
doubted, does not come down to us in his real- 
ity. The story of him is palpably mythological. 
The progress of Christianity has nothing super- 
natural about it, and is indeed a simpler and less 



130 Through Rome On, 

striking plienoraenon than the wondrous triumph 
and spread of Mohammedanism, which in a cen- 
tury made its Arab disciples a united and resist- 
less power : while the slenderness of the domain 
of Christian conquests, and the great preponder- 
ance of opposing beliefs, effectually negative the 
claim for Christianity that it is the absolutely 
true and universal religion. The plea sometimes 
made on behalf of Christianity, that it must be 
divine, because it could not otherwise have made 
its way in the world with its austere and self- 
denying doctrine and practice, is based upon un- 
sound views as to both the laws of human nature 
and the special matter of fact involved. Enthu- 
siasm and other motives often cause that to be 
accepted and practised which is in itself very 
trying to human feelings. If the prevalence of 
a religion of pain and mortification were neces- 
sarily a divine attestation, the Hindoo religion, 
so wide-spread and so full of cruel severities, 
would be more markedly divine than Christian- 
ity. But it is only the class of devotees that 
consistently illustrate this trait of a religious sys- 
tem. The first Christians were characteristically 
devotees, in constant expectation of the Lord in 
the clouds and the awful Judgment that was to 
follow his appearance. The great doctrine of 
original Christianity having been refuted by the 
event, and succeeding generations having lost the 



Through Rome On. 131 

daily stimulation it supplied, it has long been a 
very clear fact that the great body of Christians 
do not lead lives of self-denial and mortification, 
but seek and enjoy the comforts of luxurious liv- 
ing as naturally as any otlier people. Much 
more to the point than the Christian argument I 
have stated, is the sarcasm of Yoltaire, that 
Christianity is undoubtedly divine, since so many 
centuries of imposture and superstition have 
failed to destroy it. 

Having learned, with a lively surprise at first, 
that the living human organism occasionally de- 
velops wondrous properties of prescience and 
healing, yet to be fairly ranged in the categories 
of science, I should have had no lingering diffi- 
culty with the alleged cases of prophecy and 
restoration which believers refer to as miraculous, 
had the cases been better sustained by evidence 
than I found them to be ; but in truth, the prime 
Christian " miracles " are so poorly vouched 
for that there is no need of any more serious ex- 
planation for them than for other legends. 

Catholicism and supernaturalist Protestantism 
are disposed of together when the alleged mi- 
raculous foundation of Christianity is exploded. 
Catholics hold up the Christian scriptures as his- 
torical documents, and argue from the statements 
in those scriptures that Christianity was given 
with miracles and the infallible Church estab- 



132 Through Borne On. 

lished by Jesus Christ. Protestants agree with 
Catholics in affirming the miraculoiisness of the 
Christian foundation, on the strength of the New- 
Testament writings; denying, however, the per- 
manent infalHble constitution of the Church. 
Unhappily for both these sanguine parties, the 
documents on which they rely lack that fulness 
of authentication which is necessary in any grave 
matter claiming to be historical. It is trifling 
with the intelligence of our age to claim author- 
ity for them on the uncritical testimony of the 
earliest Christian witnesses ; who, besides being 
too late for the purpose for which they are cited, 
are so obviously credulous and fanciful on the 
subject, that one who consults them for himself 
soon sees that as evidential guides they are ut- 
terly untrustworthy. Christian-evidence writers 
do not usually let their docile disciples know 
what is the real character and value of the testi- 
mony they invoke so freely. The fathers, it is 
clear, were no literary critics, and the scriptures 
were handled very capriciously by them. They 
received what pleased them and rejected what 
displeased them. They made grave arguments 
for the four gospels from there being four winds, 
&c. If they testify to our present canon, so also 
do they to the Shepherd of Hermas, the Clemen- 
tine Epistles, and other writings which Christians 
are now agreed in pronouncing spm-ious. No 



Through Rome On. 133 

one knows anything of the originals of the Bible: 
the putative copies are very doubtful in them- 
selves, and doubly doubtful from the hands they 
have passed through; the translations in modern 
languages, which necessarily furnish the only 
Bible that Christians at large can turn to, are 
various, conflicting, and so palpably erroneous 
that new versions are continually called for. 
There is the greatest variety of opinion among 
students and learned critics as to the genuine- 
ness, right reading, &c., of the accepted gospels; 
and no satisfactory reason has ever yet been 
given why we should accord to the marvels re- 
lated in those scriptures a credit which, following 
the rule of enlightened criticism, we constantly 
refuse to the similar narratives in other writings 
that have come down to us from the credulous 
past. The want of contemporary evidence in 
support of the gospels, as w^ell as the self-con- 
victing contradictions they contain, is fatal to 
their credit as historical narratives. To build so 
vast and weighty a structure of authoritative re- 
ligion upon so slender and frail a foundation, is 
to doom the former to a crushing overthrow at 
last ; and we see — when we dare, or are forced, 
to use our eyes — the shaking and preparation for 
the fall. Our church people of to-day, without 
giving up miracles, yet hold their religion upon 
very different grounds, and find it more and 



134: Through Rome On. 

more embarrassing to resort to the old method 
of proof. They silently feel the truth of Mon- 
taigne's remark, that belief in miracles is a 
measure of our ignorance. The very ignorant, 
credulous by nature and habit, accept such things 
without stint. Persons of cultivated intelligence 
are found to believe in certain miracles which 
partake of the credit of something else with which 
they are connected in the minds of the believers; 
who, however, continue to occupy the general 
ground of incredulity in regard to other miracles. 
The attempt to rest Revelation on sensible ex- 
ternal prodigies indicates that there is no such 
thing. A genuine Divine Revelation would in- 
stantly ravish man's heart and understanding. 
It would strike him as immediately and as irre- 
sistibly as the lightning strikes. To talk of such 
a revelation's being a matter of argument and 
delay, of report and writing from one generation 
to another, subject to the casualties of all human 
tradition, is to forget the necessary order of 
correspondences, and to cut the nexus between 
the mind of man and its Creator. 

It was clear to me in the end, that men never 
receive an historical religion upon historical 
grounds, and only in very rare instances take 
any pains with the historical argument before 
becoming believers. Mental habitudes, educa- 
tion, and social circumstances, in the main de- 



Through Borne On. 135 

termine one's religion. A person first gets 
his religion, and then perhaps looks at the 
"evidences"; his mind made up and turned 
away from anything that contradicts them. I 
may confidently appeal to the experience of my 
readers, Catholic and Protestant, for confirma- 
tion of this remark. That very earnest logician 
Dr. Brownson does indeed declare that " the ques- 
tion is one that meets the inquirer at the thresh- 
old"; and implies that he could not have accepted 
the Church "without meeting it, considering it at 
length, and disposing of it." The Doctor's 
stomach for evidence is much superior to any- 
thing of the kind among Protestants ; for he 
finds that " Pius IX., the pontilT now gloriously 
reigning, is as easily and certainly proved to be 
the successor of Peter, as Ulysses S. Grant is 
proved to be the successor in the presidency of 
the United States of George Washington, the 
schism of Jefferson Davis to the contrary not- 
withstanding." (^Catholic World.^oY. 18T1, Art. 
I. Brownson' s Quarterly Review ^ Oct. 18T4:j 
pp. 519, 525.) 



The theory of Christianity is that of a super- 
natural religion. But I saw — it was burnt into 
me as I went along — that Christianity is' as na- 
tural as any other religion or system whatever. 



136 Through Rome On. 

I saw it, always and everywhere, like the other 
systems, bearing fruits after its kind, the natural 
order. I had accepted it as a sublime theocracy 
upon earth, with a divinely constituted hierarchy, 
a visible head and ruler, representing God him- 
self, rightfully dictating to the minds and con- 
sciences of men, and under the perpetual guid- 
ance of the Holy Spirit, who alone could know 
aud impart the things that are of God.^ This 
was the theory, an elevated, an inspiring theory, 
but, alas ! one that was fatally contradicted by 
the facts of the case, as they were forced upon 
my attention. I found the Church not restrained 
by tlie Spirit of God from becoming a party, 
a contestant, an intriguer even, in the arena of 
earthly politics. I saw the Divine representative 
contending for prizes and power with mundane 
potentates. I saw the agencies of religion em- 
ployed by the sacred order to gratify personal 
and partisan vengeance, to secure the objects of 
sensuality and godless ambition, and to put 
down what is now known to be the truth. I saw 
that the supposed divine powers were allowed to 
be passionately and violently exercised by the 
consecrated pontiffs, as human powers would na- 
turally have been exercised by secular tyrants, at 
their own will and pleasure. I saw crimes and 
scandals of all sorts running riot in the Church, 

1 I Cor. iL 11. 



Through Home On. 137 

and reflected from the yery seat of the apostolate. 
I saw that there was no Divine provision or in- 
terposition to prevent such things, but, as with 
other institutions, the course of nature always 
went on. I saw the necessary visible headship 
vacant or doubtful for years at a time. I could 
not agree with Catholic pleaders that, from the 
Catholic point of view, " it should be no matter 
of surprise that thirty instances of schism on oc- 
casions of papal elections are enumerated by 
church liiGtorians." ^ To an earnest-minded be- 
liever in the Catholic teachins; of the institution 
of the papacy and the accompanying promise of 
Christ, it should be very grave matter of surprise ; 
and the surprise grew into something like con- 
sternation as I contemplated the facts of the Great 
Schism which began towards the close of the 
fourteenth century and lasted nearly forty years ; 
when faithful Christians, whether wise or simple, 
could not know which of the rival popes was en- 
titled to their allegiance. Milner indeed says, in 
his End of Controversy^ that the true Pope was 
always clearly discernible; but a study of the 
history of those times convinces me that he is 
wrong in the assertion. However settled the va- 
lidity of the Urban line may be for Catholics now^ 

^ The Primacy of tJie Apostolic See Vindicated. By Fran- 
cis Patrick Kenrick, Bishop of Philadelphia. Third ed., 
p. 283. 



138 Through Rome On. 

it was very different in that unhappy period of 
Christendom's bewilderment, when, as Kenrick 
admits {Primacy, p. 285), it was ^' difficult for 
the most conscientious and enlightened men to 
pronounce with certainty who was the lawful 
occupant of the apostolic chair." The canonical 
question remains a puzzle to me still ; and I never 
could conceive, as a Christian, how such an im- 
broglio in the Divine plan could have been pos- 
sible. Selden profanely observes, that in the 
councils of the Church the odd man is the Holy 
Ghost ; but it was not the odd man's vote that 
made Urban pope, but the more obviously unholy 
clamours of a Roman mob ; and the violence 
which swayed the conclave in that doubtful elec- 
tion was itself the fruit of a complication appar- 
ently unlooked for by the Lord, which for a long 
time separated Peter's residence from Peter's 
see. The authority of the Council of Constance 
to do what it did was disputed at the time, and in 
view of decisions of the Church in our day is per- 
haps worse than questionable ; though the sub- 
mission of John XXII. (or XXIII., as some 
reckon) and the general acquiescence of the 
Church made it practically effective in disposing 
of the Great Schism ; which, however, stands a 
monument in history of the folly of ascribing 
supernatural divinity to any institution among 
men. 



Through Borne On, 139 

It became impossible to believe tbat so foul 
a body as the Ecclcsia docens sometimes showed 
itself to be could be inhabited by the Holy 
Spirit ; impossible to think that God would not 
hav^e secured it against such foulness if He had 
really ordained that it should be so inhabited. 
These impossibilities would have been rationally 
destructive of faith if the Church had not been 
convicted of error in her specific function of in- 
terpreter and teacher besides, as I presently 
found her to be : but this latter discovery, show- 
ing by particular instances that she was a blun- 
derer in esse, and so precluding the further 
denial that she was a hhmderev in posse, over- 
turned her infallibility and set me free. No 
elaborate argument is needed on this point : the 
instances are numerous : here are two that occur 
to me. The Church has sanctioned bloody reli- 
gious persecution. This involves a question of 
morals, on which, according to Catholic doc- 
trine, the Church is infallible. Thus her infalli- 
bility is staked upon the rightness of religious 
persecution. The almost universal conscience 
of enlightened mankind pronounces against the 
Church on this point. It is in vain to deny that 
the Church has sanctioned persecution, even to 
the death of the contumacious heretic. True it 
is a maxim of the Church that she abhors blood- 
shed ; and bloodshed is one of her canonical im- 



140 Through Rome On. 

pediments to the exercise of the priestly office. 
True the public execution of heretics is seen to 
bo the immediate act of the civil authority and 
in accordance with the law of the land. But 
true also it is, that the Church is the mistress 
and interpreter of her maxims, and, being the 
supreme authority on earth, cannot be arraigned 
before any other tribunal here to be tried by 
any maxim; and»that she can remove canonical 
impediments by her dispensing power and at her 
good pleasure. True also is it, that the Church 
inspires and approves the penal laws passed by 
the civil authorities against heretics; that she 
herself exercises the judicial office under those 
laws, decides upon the guilt of the heretic, and 
hands him over to the civil authority with as- 
sured knowledge and approval of his impending 
fate. It is a well-settled principle that what one 
does by another is done by one's self. The civil 
authority is in persecution only an instrument of 
the Church. The Church is the monitor of the 
State on all questions of morals. Undisputed 
facts show that the Church has sanctioned 
bloody religious persecution; and if this perse- 
cution is not merely politically inexpedient, but 
morally wrong, the sanction of it by the Church 
proves that she is not infallible. 

The Church has certainly decreed against 
truth in science ; and is not her word to be taken 



Through Borne On, 141 

"wlien slic says she is speaking in lier province ? 
One who heartily beheves in her as a supernatu- 
ral guide cannot refuse to take her word. If 
she does not know when and how to interfere as 
guardian of the faith, then is she not in truth the 
heavenly directed S[)Ouse of Christ ; and so the 
whole Catholic theory falls to the ground. Co- 
pernicus's book " On the Kevolution of the 
Heavenly Bodies " was condemned by the Con- 
gregation of the Index as containing "false 
Pythagorean doctrine, utterly contrary to the 
Holy Scriptures "; and, the Pope approving, this 
condemnation becomes clearly enough the act of 
the Church, and as such ought to be accepted 
and defended by all true and hearty Catholics. 
Copernicus, it is well known, did not live to be 
personally handled along with his book. Gali- 
leo did. There has been much discussion about 
Galileo's condemnation. This settles down into 
clearness after it all : Galileo was condemned, 
and his true views were improbated by the 
Church. Let nobody be led away from the 
point by any cavilling about the kind or degree 
of the man's punishment. That is quite an in- 
significant matter now. The mistake of the 
infallible Church is the pregnant thing. The 
astronomer was condemned, his science was con- 
demned, that science which is now assured to us 
as true. He and it were condemned by the 



142 Through Home On. 

Cliiirch, and justly from the Christian point of 
view. The teaching of the earth's motion is 
contrary to the Scriptures; and if either the 
Church or Orthodox Protestantism were true, 
the condemnation of Copernicus and of Galileo 
would be right. But the Church, says the Cath- 
olic, — the Bible, says the Protestant, — was not 
sent to teach astronomy. Nay, the Church, jny 
dear Catholic, on your principle, is commissioned 
to say what Revelation forbids to he taught, 
in astronomy or anything else ; and so she has 
at least a negative voice in astronomy. And the 
Bible, my dear Protestant, if it be the Divine 
communication you say it is, cannot trip or blun- 
der even incidentally. The Holy Spirit could 
not have made a mistake through, inadvertence, 
in haste to get on to what was specially meant 
to be taught ; could not have been betrayed into 
a false statement of any hind in its record 
through the ignorance of its human instrument. 
The moment you say this happened, you give up 
plenary inspiration, you give up the supernatural 
authority of the whole Bible, and leave it thence- 
forth a matter of conjecture when it is God's 
word and when man's. But, to continue the 
narrative of my own case, — the Protestant con- 
ceit of infallibility ^vas never anything but ludi- 
crous : my serious concern was with the Church's 
pretensions, and my predicament as a child of 



Through Home On, 143 

the Clmrcli. The Church had certainly raised 
her voice against scientific truth ; and the private 
Christian is bound to hear the Church (Matt, 
xviii. 17), and to hearken to her voice as to the 
voice of God himself (Luke x. 16). That her 
voice in the particular case was now silenced by 
the spirit of the age, did not relieve me from the 
dilemma while I remained a Catholic. I knew 
that she had spoken, and what her decisions 
were. My explicit obligation was to her, not to 
the spirit of the age, which I had renounced 
with the world, the flesh, and the devil. I per- 
ceived that I was bound to believe the Pope 
when he pronounced upon the extent of his own 
prerogative ; and that in. this way Christian faith 
and humility apparently required the sacrifice of 
civil obligations, tlie acceptance of contradictory 
propositions, and the rejection of the teachings 
of science. I saw that the Church, like other 
human organisations, often went astray; that 
the Bible, like other human compositions, con- 
tained falsities and impurities as well as moral 
excellence and truth ; and that Christians were 
no more led by supernatural light than pagans 
and unbelievers. All this tended to show the 
Christian order natural, not supernatural; hu- 
man, not divine. And I saw that there has 
always been, undeniable goodness outside of the 
supposed revealed religion. The supernatural 



144 Through Rome On. 

religion indeed onglit to be illustrated bj super- 
natural goodness, all-fair, all-convincing, divine. 
I sought this in the Church, and for a time de- 
luded myself with the fancy that I had found it 
there. I clung to the heroism and consecration 
of the saints, and fondly said to myself that here 
were examples of more than human goodness, 
examples not to be paralleled outside of the City 
of God. But this fancy could live only in the 
air of the closet, and while the fumes of enthusi- 
asm lasted in the brain. When I closed the 
Acta Sanctorum and rose from my knees, and 
looked abroad and around in the cool daylight 
of my sane senses, I saw that among the children 
of this world there was goodness not below the 
best that the saints had ever displayed ; good- 
ness right at my side, in heretical, and infidel, 
and atheistical shapes; goodness under all forms 
of intellectual truth and error, everywhere and 
always in the world : that goodness is an earthly 
product, not a heavenly graft or infusion ; and 
that in the matter of asceticism, which I had 
mistaken for an expression of goodness, the 
heathen were not behind tlie Christian saints. I 
saw that goodness is essentially distinct from 
religion, is manifestly independent of Christian- 
ity, has been greatly injured, indeed, by Chris- 
tianity, in some times and places, is hampered 
now by that religion, and is not in favour with 



Through Rome On, 145 

zealous Cliristians when it is not baptised with 
the Christian name. I saw, in fine, that Chris- 
tianity involved, for me, the torture and surren- 
der of conscience. 

The Ultramontane claims, in which we have 
genuine developed Christianity, present an en- 
gaging picture of a theoretical Divine establish- 
ment ; but to assert them of the actual ecclesias- 
tical order whose workings history exhibits to 
us so plainly, is too audacious, too extravagant, 
for patience and common sense to bear. The 
Gallican theory, so much relied on by " liberal 
Catholics " and their allies in this age and coun- 
try of liberal politics, is mere shift and evasion. 
It does not fit the conception of infallible or- 
ganic Christianity, and has ever been a desperate 
attempt to reconcile incompatibles. It answered 
its special purpose in French politics in the fif- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries ; and it has 
served the turn of short-sighted or disingenuous 
pleaders repeatedly since ; but it is in its logical 
essence the denial and destruction of the ecclesi- 
astical principle ; and its history shows how 
false and impossible supernaturalism is in rela- 
tion to the things of earth and time. 

The compelled exclusiveness of the Christian 
character, which, in view of the damning sin of 
heresy and the general unholiness of secular life, 
I had felt to be consistent and obligatory, and at 



146 Through Home On. 

the same time unnatural and cruel and impracti- 
cable, was one of the final solvents of the bonds 
which held me to the faith. I could not be so 
sure of an J existing evidence for Kevelation as I 
was of the fact of honest intelligent doubt and 
disbelief of Hevelation : and this fact was in 
vital contradiction to the claims of Revelation in 
the supernaturalist sense. The argument is in- 
deed very simple, and it has had from the first 
the force of conviction to my mind. Supernatu- 
ralists are not logically wrong in proceeding 
from their postulate of Hevelation to attach dis- 
honesty and wickedness to unbelief; but the 
postulate itself is demonstrated false by the pal- 
pably false conclusion properly derived from it. 
Looked at in itself, it is seen to be unverifiable 
and weakly supported : looked at in its conclu- 
sions, common sense and common charity spon- 
taneously condemn it. The theorem is still 
boldly upheld in the abstract ; but its applica- 
tion in the concrete is now constantly evaded. 
The goodness of unbelievers upsets all church 
theories on the subject. When it is no longer 
practicable to punish heresy as a crime, men 
have practically abandoned the Orthodox theory 
of Hevelation. Religious persecution belonged 
to the spirit of past ages, and has been gradually 
dying out as that spirit has been informed and 
changed ; but it is the proper fruit and action of 



Through Rome On. 147 

the principle of theology and belief in a fixed 
infallible E-evelation. Believers are now tolerant 
because the perfect, fervent, compelling faith 
of the past is no longer possible. They ought, 
logically, to persecute as fiercely as of yore; 
but, unconsciously moulded by the spirit of the 
age, it is no longer in them to do so. The lead- 
ing races of mankind have now new intuitions 
and a higher law of life, at whose silent bidding 
they give up their theology in its spirit long be- 
fore the fulness of time when they shall abandon 
it in the letter also. 



So far from finding a miraculous origin for 
Christianity, I could not, confining myself to 
genuine grounds of history, so separate it from 
its Jewish connexions as to discern a precise be- 
ginning for it at all. If it was " founded " by 
Christ or anybody else, the act was done in a 
very dark corner, to which no ray of authentic 
history has ever penetrated. It is first seen 
emerging from the shadow of the synagogue, a 
reformed Judaism, gradually acquiring an inde- 
pendent shape and recognition of its own, and 
preparing, by an austere doctrine and practice 
which refused all compromise with existing pa- 
ganism, to sow in the fields of martyrdom the 
seed of a splendid and perdurable destiny. Mar- 



148 Through Rome On. 

tyrdom, indeed, first gives Christianity historic 
definiteness ; for it is not until the Neronian per- 
secution in the year 64:, that we find it growing 
into clear outline as something quite distinct 
from Judaism. The burning zeal of the Chris- 
tian devotees, who expected a speedy coming of 
the great Judge and swift destruction of unbe- 
lievers, was a mighty instrument in the propaga- 
tion of the new religion ; which was further com- 
mended to the people of the Koman Empire by 
the need of something fresh and instinct with 
life to take the place of the eflfete and dying myth- 
ology derived from Greece. Christianity was 
an inevitable resultant, in due season, from mixed 
elements of thought and spirituality fused to a 
certain point. It was a timely evolution, and so 
responded to Ho man religiosity as by sure degrees 
to leaven the mass, and to win a final triumph to 
which its ardent advocates of to-day yet point as 
miraculous. A similar phenomenon is witnessed 
in the wondrous success of a not unrelated reli- 
gion, Mohammedanism, six centuries later; 
which to the Mohammedan believer doubtless 
seems as divine a miracle as the Chi'istian reckons 
his. 

How men behave in the straits to which the 
doctrine of miracles brings them ! Mohammed, 
being asked for a miracle, pointed to the Koran 
as a standing miracle. Luther demanded mha- 



Through Rome On. 149 

cles of tlie sectaries to justify their separation 
from him ; forgetting that he had no miracles to 
justify his separation from the Clmrch. Dr. 
Bushneir admits the natural improbability of the 
gospel miracles ; but insists that the portraiture 
of Jesus is so divinely impressive as to make the 
marvels related of him credible ! It is stated, 
and I believe truly, that twenty years ago fifty 
millions of copies of the books of Noah AVebster 
had been sold to all parts of the world. This 
would make a very pretty miracle, if Noah "Web- 
ster instead of having invented a new language 
had only invented a new religion. Not that it 
would convince any but Websterites themselves ; 
but to them it would be of so stupendous a char- 
acter as to fill them with a flaming indignation 
against the hardened infidels who refused to ac- 
knowledge its miraculousness and continued to 
regard Websterism as a hnman phenomenon. 

Since I traced the argument for myself, I have 
read Archbishop Trench on the Miracles. The 
archbishop says, that " the purpose of the mira- 
cle being to confirm that which is good, so, upon 
the other hand, where the mind and conscience 
witness against the doctrine not all the miracles 
in the world have a right to demand submission 
to the word which they seal," &c. : and " a 
miracle does not prove the truth of a doctrine or 
» Nature and the Supernatural^ Ch. x. p. 377. 



150 Through Rome On, 

the divine mission of him that brings it to 
pass." ^ 

Columbus may never be canonised ; but he 
seems to have appreciated the force of miraculous 
attestation when he brought an eclipse to bear 
upon the JS^orth- American Indians. 



In reading over the preceding pages, I note 
a statement which perhaps requires some quali- 
fication. I have spoken of all supernaturalism's 
going from me with Catholicism. In the sense 
of a belief in supernatural revelation, the state- 
ment as to super naturalism is correct. I had no 
affinity to any other religion left. There is, 
however, a remnant of supernaturalism outside 
of the religions, which in some cases is never 
put away by minds that have rejected the reli- 
gions forever. 1 was not destined to retain even 
this remnant among my settled conclusions ; but 
it did survive Catholicism a few weeks, or per- 
haps months ; during which time I held to the 
mild theism set forth by the first Liberal writers 
that I consulted. I was disposed to believe in 
the religious sentiment asserted by Theodore 
Parker, and in the intuitions relied on for so 
much by Professor Newman. It required no 
long time, however, to enable me to perceive 

^ Trench on the Miracles, Am. ed., pp. 27, 28. 



Through Home On. 151 

that either these gifted and good men were mis- 
led by the peculiar religiosity of their natures, or 
I laboured under a dulness of spiritual instinct 
which doomed me to fall short of the truth. I 
am satisfied now, that among real thinkers theism 
is a matter of temperament. The strong reasons 
which exist for refusing to ascribe this universe 
of good and evil to the plan and providence of a 
Benevolent Personal Creator are overborne in 
the minds of such men as I have mentioned by 
the ardour of their religious sensibilities ; which 
lead them to rehabilitate the hackney pleadings 
of the churches, that have been refuted a thou- 
sand times over, and that collapse indeed of their 
own emptiness as soon as the air which faith 
supplied is let out of them. Of course the minds 
of these temperamental theists are not satisfied 
with the pleadings themselves, with which tliey 
labour on so unnaturally and painfully, in such 
contrast to the vivacity and power of their argu- 
ment against the churches : but their constitution 
binds them to the ungrateful task, till, forced at 
last to acknowledge the inadequacy of the objec- 
tive materials for proof, they fall back upon a 
supposed interior sense of God and the divine 
relations of the soul, of Free Will, and of Immor 
tality. Thus they ride down the resistance of 
their understandings, and raise their cherished 
doctrines to the rank of first principles, needing 



152 Through Borne On. 

no proof. Their intuitions are as unanswerable 
as the revelations privately vouchsafed to the 
Arabian prophet, or as the Holy Spirit abiding 
with the Church. With my different tempera- 
ment the effect was different. My heart's desires 
were in harmony with theirs ; but in my case 
desire was humble and waited on the judgment. 
My reverence, too, which made me a natural 
worshipper, rendered the theological conception 
of the universe intolerable to me. I was struck 
with the doubt intimated by Parker in one part 
of the Discourse of Matters pertaining to Re- 
ligion^ as to the propriety of ascribing personal- 
ity to God. The effect tlms produced on my 
mind was increased by the plain straigiitforward 
reflections of Miss Martineau and Mr. Atkinson 
in their Letters on the Law of Ifan^s Ifature 
and Development ; and I soon perceived the 
inconsequence of rejecting Christianity on the 
ground of its disagreement with the facts of na- 
ture, and continuing to accept so palpable a con- 
tradiction as the common notion of Deity remains 
after all the reiinements of it by our modern 
theists. These theists would preserve theology 
divested of its salient horrors under the old teach- 
ing. Their doctrine has not the repulsiveness 
of Evangelicalism, but it is open to the same 
three-fold radical objection : that it cannot main- 
tain itself on the ground of common reason; 



Through Home On. 153 

that it departs from the scientific method ; and 
that it needlessly introduces a demoralising ele- 
ment into man's conception of the universe. An 
eviscerated theology is theology still ; and all 
theology is babbling. Only by putting it all 
aside could I find peace and tranquillity in a 
reverent contemplation of existence. As long as 
one is haunted by the spirit of theology — and a 
great proportion of mankind are constitutionally 
hopeless of complete deliverance from it — one is 
driven to v^^orry over insoluble problems, and to 
follow imaginations of deities and demons to 
help the cheat of knowing what can never be 
known. Somehow, I was not made to be a vic- 
tim to this spirit. I was able to rest when I 
could go no farther, and was not tormented with 
any such necessity of searching into the unsearch- 
able as is a standing attribute of the factitious 
sceptic drawn by religious writers ; nor could I 
discover in myself the " intuitions " insisted on 
by the Liberal Theists. The theory of the latter 
I saw to be at bottom that of the churches, from 
which I had recoiled with an immitigable dis- 
gust already. As soon as they set up a supreme 
Will as the Cause of causes, they suggest cruelty 
in the eternal constitution of things. Stop with 
the Universe, acknowledge that to be the Incom- 
prehensible, and though you have Evil, you have 
not necessarily malignity or injustice on the part 



154 Through Home On, 

of any greater being towards man ; who sees E"a- 
ture to be without pity or remorse, but also with- 
out malevolence. Refuse to stop witli the Uni- 
verse, assert the intelligent design and power of 
a personal or quasi personal \\^ill, making the 
Universe to be what it is, and you complicate 
and darken the problem in a fearful degree ; for 
whatever you hope the future may be, you know 
that the present has evil in it; and thus the su- 
preme Will, like the subordinate human will, 
works evil as well as good. If the existence of 
good in the Universe implies a Benevolent {bene 
volens) Creator, by the same rule, the existence 
of evil implies a Malevolent {male volens) Crea- 
tor. The evil is not less certain than the good. 
No refining can do away with this fact. Your 
hope that evil will cease and good continue to 
exist seems without any foundation in reason. 
"Why not good cease and unmixed evil remain ? 
^Tou wish that this should not be, and you think 
that it ought not. But if your wish and opinion 
could prevail, there would be no evil now, would 
there ? Evidently your wish and opinion are 
not accordinoj to the '' desio^n " of the Universe. 
The existence of evil, which no sophistry can ex- 
plain away, shows that evil is compatible with 
the nature of things. We cannot understand 
the nature of things, nor account for it in any 
possible way. To suppose a Theos does not 



Through Home On. 155 

help tlie matter in the smallest degree, but makes 
it worse, and is besides utterly gratuitous. It 
follows, that theology, or the confident talk about 
Theos, is, as I have before said, babbling. The 
fancy tliat we have reached the Absolute in the 
notion of a bodiless Mind — as if our highest 
reach, if mind be that, must be Highest Being ; 
as if anything that we can possibly reach can be 
the Highest ! — afforded no point of rest for me. 
Church doctrine is only the extension and play 
of this fancy ; which is to me untrue and shock- 
ing in its very essence. So, with all my spiritual 
sympathy with such men as Theodore Parker 
and F. W. Newman, I could not anchor my mind 
at last in their theistic doctrines, embracing an 
asserted Divine Person,' to be invoked by us; 
the sense of Individual Immortality ; and Free 
Will as I understood them to hold it. 

I will observe here of the doctrine of Indi- 



^ "Those who espouse this alternative position make 
the erroneous assumption that the choice is between per- 
sonality and something below personality; whereas the 
choice is rather between personality and something 
higher. Is it not just possible that there is a mode of 
being as much transcending Intelligence and Will as 
these transcend mechanical motion ?" — Herbert Spen- 
cer : First Principles, Am. ed., p. 109. 

To turn away from the stony temples and petrified 
doctrines of supernaturalism, and read Bacon under- 
standingly, and know Kant, and walk hand in hand with 



156 Through Rome On, 

vidual Immortality in particular, that it had not 
at any earlier stage of my inquiries been exam- 
ined, nor, so far as I remember, called in ques- 
tion by me. The horrible form which it wears 
in the teachings of Evangelical theology had, 
indeed, long ago revolted me ; and in that shape 
it had been utterly rejected. I had, too, been 
accustomed to speculate on the surprise which 
the actual conditions of the " other world '^ would 
probably be to departed souls, after the deranged 
imaginations of it which had possessed them in 
this. The future life depicted and believed in 
among church people I had long viewed as an 
empty phantasm. That there is a future life for 
every member of the human family I had, how- 
ever, continued to take for granted, my close at- 
tention never having been given to the point till 
the cognate tenet of a Supreme Personal Intelli- 
gence corresponding to man came at last in its 
turn to be scrutinised. Then I saw the almost 
necessary dependence of Immortality on Theism ; 
and that as man has out of the qualities of his 
own nature created for himself a God, so has he, 
out of the fears and desires of a yet unripe hu- 
manity, given birth to a visionary land of souls 



Spencer, is like coming out of some Druidical grove of 
sacrifice into the pure air and lightsome day for which 
we were made. 



Through Rome On. 15T 

with a satisfying perfection of good or evil which 
he sees to be impossible here. 



I separated from the theists with regret, but 
with determination, and on the very threshold. 
I could not with them accept the foundations 
only to quarrel with the height of the superstruc- 
ture afterwards. Free Will is in their eclectic 
faith what the Divine Glory is in Calvinism : 
the factitious end which by Jesuitical^ casuistry 
is to justify evil as the ineans of its attainment. 
They know free will, as stout Doctor Johnson 
knew it : they have a demonstrative conscious- 
ness of it. I am acquainted with a man who 
knows that the earth does not move. He has a 
demonstrative consciousness that it does not. In 
regard to free will, my consciousness points to a 
different conclusion from the theists'. So far 
from feeling myself an originating, creating, first- 
causing will-being, I feel and know just the con- 
trary. The ability of the human mind to take 

1 I use this word in its current popular sense, without 
any grain of the popular notion in my mind that the 
maxim or practice it denotes is peculiar to the Jesuits. 
The eminent early Christian Eusebius was more Jesuiti- 
cal than Ignatius of Loyola. (For the approbation of 
deceit among the early Christian advocates, see TliQ 
Friend^ Essay Y.) 



158 Through Rome On. 

cognisance of its own operations, though swelling 
the complexity of the problem, in no way alters 
its nature or removes it beyond the category of 
sensible causes and effects. I can agree with 
Dr. Carpenter in his Mental Physiology^ that 
man ** really does possess a self -determining 
power," " within certain limits," and is conscious 
of it : but this is not in the absolute sense free 
(that is, uncaused) will. 

The Liberal Theists will not consent to be 
called by the name which their predecessors 
bore, but insist on a designation which shall in- 
clude them with church Christians, in agree- 
ment with whom they hang the universe, with 
all its infinite complexity, upon a supernatural 
personal Will ; an essentially theological concep- 
tion, and one which, taking the plain facts of 
nature in view, is appalling. They assume, with 
the supernaturalists, a personal Deity, willing a 
vast system with pain and wrong among its con- 
stituent elements. They commonly assume, in 
like manner, with only the example of the su- 
pernaturalists to back them, an immortal destiny 
for each individual man. Then they assume an 
instinct of the truth of their assumptions : and 
finally, they imitate the very whine of the church 
people in speaking of the nobleness and impor- 
tance of then- notions, and the " blank " which 
nature and futurity must present to minds that 



Through Rome On. 159 

are not nourished upon their precious Extract of 
Christianity. I turned away from them, I say, 
upon the very threshold ; and I have never felt 
the least throb of inclination to rejoin them since. 
The pet tenets which they are at such pains to 
preserve when throwing the rest overboard con- 
tain the very pith and marrow of theology. I 
cannot see why they should strain at miracles 
and devils while they continue so easily to swal- 
low the deliberate acceptance of evil by the Su- 
preme Being. If this dreadful doctrine be true, 
the other doctrines in natural association with it 
may be true also. I could not answer Butler's 
Analogy on their premises. Evidently, all that 
we know of nature goes against the theory of a 
just, discriminating Providential Mind as its 
source. And when the theist, having ventured 
an argument upon the face of nature, and having 
reached this point where nature so plainly testi- 
fies against him, falls back upon conjectures of 
another life where Justice shall rule as it mani- 
festly does not here, he abandons the ground he 
has taken, and sets up an unverifiable hypothesis 
of a reformed Providence, which, however agree- 
able it may be to the fancy, has no support in 
sober reason. If the rule of Providence in the 
present life be one of injustice, there is no reason 
to believe that a future life under the same 
Providence will be differently ordered, so as to 



160 Through Rome On. 

be just and liappj : and if the order of the pres- 
ent life be right, there can be no need of a fu- 
ture life as a scene of reparation. Our wish to 
be rid of what is bad and painful, and secured in 
what is good and pleasant, of course does not 
affect the argument. The existence of a wish 
does not imply that it will ever be gratified. 

The theological and common view, which 
makes the reason for doing right the result of 
striking a commercial balance ; and which is fol- 
lowed by theists in their close calculation of 
what the " sum of existence " may, despite of 
present wrong, turn out to be, is grievously low 
and immoral, it seems to me. Theists are essen- 
tially theological in their treatment of mind. 
"While in one view they make it an impossible 
first cause of its own voHtions, in another they 
insist, in contempt of the plainest facts, on re- 
garding it as something outside of the apprehen- 
sible laws of nature, and as a subject of miracle 
rather than of science. This strikes me as intel- 
lectual vagrancy, a straying from knowledge in 
the opposite direction. I find it a violent trans- 
position to consider matter as proceeding from 
mind. On the contrary, mind would seem to be 
the natural product of matter in some of its con- 
ditions. T7e find mind, like motion, heat, &c., 
the regular accompaniment of certain combina- 
tions of matter. It is apparently a proper phe- 



Through Home On. 161 

nomenon of those conditions. TVe know of 
mindless matter ; but we do not know anywhere 
of matterless mind. Nothing seems to me 
clearer than the physical source of mental phe- 
nomena; and I do not find mental phenomena 
more truly wonderful or ultimately inexplicable 
than heat, light, motion, odours ; nor, after what 
is now known of the transmutation of forces (or 
the varying phases of the one force) and of mo- 
lecular oscillation in its bearing upon nervous 
perception, am I startled at thought's develop- 
ment from motion and sensation, more than 
at motion's becoming heat and heat motion. 
Everything that we learn on these subjects leads 
us away from supernaturalism. Mind is not 
more unaccountable, nor more suggestive of im- 
perishableness, than the marvellous vitality of 
plant and flower and the teeming animal world. 
The relations of sun and earth furnish apparently 
a fully sufficient cause for the generation of life 
and intelligence in all their forms that are known 
to us. Life and death I see to be successive 
phases of incomprehensible substance ; of which 
all special existences that we know of, celestial 
systems and terrestrial products and organisms, 
including man that fondly fancies himself the 
one creature with a beginning but no end, ar6 
dissoluble, passing forms. Intelligent as well as 
unintelligent life is more and more plainly seen 



162 Through Rome On, 

to be of a chemical nature, and subject in all its 
forms to waning and dissolution. Every act of 
mind is accompanied with nervous waste, with 
consumption of tissue : mental manifestations 
are seen to be dependent on brain and nervous 
system, as contractility is upon the muscles. 
"When all muscular action is ended, there can be 
no manifestation of strength : when all nervous 
action is ended, there can be no manifestation of 
soul or mind. It may as well be said that a 
man's bodily strength will live in its individual- 
ity after his death, as that his mind will. Her- 
cules is as immortal as the Muses. The elements 
wliich in a particular arrangement make an indi- 
vidual man are themselves indestructible by 
death ; but it does not follow that the particular 
arrangement of them which for a time has the 
individuality of Alexander or Zeno is therefore 
indestructible. The elements are indestructible 
in their essence ; but the individual man, like 
the indi\ddual flower, plant, insect, beast, being 
but a temporary combination of the elements, — ■ 
a form, — is in a different category. Substance 
is eternal, but not the forms of substance. These 
are perpetually changing, dissolving, passing 
away, giving place to one another. The decay 
and death of forms release the elements wliich 
have composed those forms ; and the elements, 
entering into new combinations, proceed afresh 



Through Home On. 163 

in tlie career of birth, growth, brief ripeness, 
decay, and dissolution, followed by new individ- 
nalisation : and of these processes of nature we 
can discover no hint of either beginning or end. 
The forms of nature are of infinite variety, man 
being the most complex known to us among 
those that we call living creatures ; but there is 
no good reason for believing that when nature 
has produced this high form, man (possibly not 
the highest of her developments), she changes 
her law and eternises him, any more than that 
she eternises any of her preceding forms. There 
can be no elixir of eternity for a form, whatever 
its robe of beauty or dignity of name. What is 
called soul I see to be the phenomenal expres- 
sion of known material conditions. To single it 
out from other phenomena and think of it as 
existing independently, I must regard as a su- 
perstition. If we are obliged to rest other forms 
of energy strictly upon matter and its functions, 
and cannot erect them into spiritual entities su- 
perior to the laws of matter, we are committed 
by the logic of the case to the same course with 
respect to soul or mind. We are bound, in 
short, to consider it one particular form offeree; 
a special function of matter resulting from a spe- 
cial differentiation of it. 



164: Through Rome On, 



I soon turned away from the Liberal roman- 
ticism on the subject of Jesus; which picks, 
chooses and refuses among the gospel materials 
in gratification of its purpose, and which extends 
this specious pleading to Christianity itself; 
holding forth the good and paltering with the 
evil in it ; speaking of " the spirit of Christian- 
ity," &c., in this one-sided way. I find it quite 
impossible to accept the prevailing view of Jesus 
as a divine or supremely authoritative being, and 
of Christianity as fundamentally superior to all 
other moral and spiritual systems, and entitled 
to the character of the ultimate and universal 
religion, adapted to all conditions and individu- 
als among mankind. I find all who put forward 
Jesus in this light doing so on the ground of 
prepossession and enthusiasm ; abandoning in 
regard to the question all that keenness of criti- 
cism and rigid following of the scientific method 
which it is the glory of our age to apply to other 
inquiries ; starting ever with the foregone con- 
clusion, and relying for its support upon the 
flimsiest possible data and arguments, just such 
as all the so-called false religions appeal to in 
confirmation of their claims. I have looked, not 
deeply, I confess, but still with some interest 



Through Rome On. 165 

and attention, into the arguments of Jews and 
Mohammedans for their respective religions. I 
can admire the ingenuity that I find in those 
arguments, can recognise the sincerity that per- 
vades them, and can easily understand how- 
strong they appear in the eyes of the people that 
employ them. They greatly resemble the argu- 
ments of Christians for their religion; and I 
cannot say that the Christian arguments seem to 
me any more forcible than the others. The 
ability displayed on the side of the unchristian 
systems would surprise the many who have 
never sought or consented to come in contact 
with it. I find this one trait common to Chi'is- 
tians and all others who plead for supernatural 
revelations : they may invoke reason and learn- 
ing at first, but they uniformly refuse to allow 
their positions to be thoroughly canvassed and 
finally determined by such means ; which are 
indeed incompatible with their real ruling prin- 
ciple, faith, that is dogmatic in the face of reason 
and learning, and that unfailingly falls back on 
the " woman's reason " which Shakspeare's Lu- 
cetta so sweetly avows. Christians of talents 
and attainments are seen to abandon those gifts 
at last in regard to their religion, and to receive 
it, and expect its acceptance, on the same grounds 
on which the dullest and most ignorant of all 
creeds believe. The reason for Christian belief 



166 Through Home' On. 

in Jesus, as for Moslem belief in Mohammed, is 
expressed in the words I have referred to : "I 
think him so because — I think him so."* 

I find the very existence of Jesus of Nazareth 
full of uncertainty.^ There were many pretend- 
ers to the Messiahship among the Jews, under 
the Homan dominion, and the name Jesus, or 
Joshua, was an exceedingly common name. The 
marvellousness of the age, the disposition to 
gather fragments of separate stories into a narra- 
tive of one ideal character that had come to be 
devoutly believed in, the impossibility of now 
sifting the scant testimony of the earliest access- 
ible Christian witnesses, the want of other than 
Christian witnesses, and the absence of all clear 
historical recognition of Jesus as the founder of 
Cliristianity, are points which leave his identity 
itself very uncertain. And if he really flourished, 
he can hardly have been other than I have else- 
where described him, a seeker after the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel, a would-be restorer 
of the higher spiritual significance of the Law 

* Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I. Sc. II. 

2 " The observations of Tryplion are weighty. He de- 
pies the divinity and messianic character of Jesus Christ; 
and what is very remarkable, he even calls in question 
his existence, and his appearance here below. ' Whether 
he was born and where he dwelt,' says he, ' is entirely 
unknown.' " — Cohen: The Deicides, p. 244, Baltimore ed. 
of Eng. trans. 



Through Borne On. 167 

and the Prophets. Then, as to what are called 
the teachings of Jesus, on which such stress is 
laid, as making him to be a supernaturallj di- 
vine revealer : not being original with him, they 
cannot, whatever their excellence, bear the 
weight that is thus laid upon them. In truth, 
they are not all excellent ; and those of them 
which most challenge our admiration were well 
known before the time of Jesus, and had long 
been current among Jews and Gentiles. As to 
the ground taken by Mr. Stopford Brooke and 
others, that the best spirituality of the ^ew 
Testament, though not born with or peculiar to 
Christianity, has received a special unction and 
power, whether supernatural or not, as delivered 
by Christ ; it seems to me that this is rather a 
devout fancy than a well-grounded opinion ; and 
if correct, it cannot do more than entitle Jesus 
to a liigh place among the most efficient instruct- 
ors of mankind. To single him out as standing 
alone, and as being the one who spake as never 
man spake, certainly seems extravagant, and 
without anything approaching to a foundation in 
the facts when dispassionately examined. 

I have extended my observations on the sub- 
ject covering the last few pages to further illus- 
trate my departure from the Liberal Theists as 
well as from Christianity proper. 



168 Through Rome On, 



The religion of civilised man, tliougli exhibit- 
ing still tlie signs of those roots of fear and mar- 
vellousness from which mainly its savage origi- 
nal sprang, is found to develop itself most freely 
and naturally through the union of desire with 
the formative imagination. "We yearn for the 
triumph of Hight over "Wrong ; and as in this 
world's affairs we have been accustomed to bide 
our time and move as patiently as we may, with 
such means as we can command, to the correc- 
tion of what is wrong, and to expect the meas- 
urable accomplishment of our yearnings as a 
future event ; so, strongly desiring the perfect 
reign of Goodness, and seeing that it is out 
of the question now, we first desire, and then 
believe, that it will come to pass hereafter. We 
feel that we would have it ^o if our personal will 
could order the matter : we feel at the same 
time that our will, though so well directed, is 
powerless for the great result : desire for the 
result remains ; and out of this desire is born a 
conception of another personal will, not less 
righteous than ours, lifted above the fretting 
limitations which hedge us in, and pursuing 
mysteriously but surely the purpose which in us 
is a desire only, because we have not power to 
make it an act of our will. As we create this 



Through Rome On. 169 

conception, there is nothing to prevent us from 
endowing it in imagination with any attribute 
our wish demands ; and so we clothe it with the 
power we lack ourselves ; with a power that is 
absolutely resistless and cannot fail ; and thus, 
the will of Almighty God is the thought-out de- 
sire of the human heart. In the same way, 
desire is the shaper of the particulars of Heve- 
lation ; Revelation itself being the product of 
our earnest wish for sympathy and divine com- 
munication. We make God in our own image, 
because only as a Person can we bring him into 
relations of sympathy and communion with us. 
^or can \c^ be satisfied with a purely invisible 
Person for our God. Still exercising our crea- 
tive prerogative, we provide him a glorified body 
for occasional uses. We think of him as a half- 
natural man, walking in the garden, enjoying 
the cool evening air; talking to Israel out of 
clouds and flame ; showing his back to Moses. 
When we have pondered the matter long, and 
held councils and voted on it, we make him out 
to be an incomprehensible Trinity of Persons in 
himself, and thereby more available t© the ends 
of our desire. He is Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost. As Father, he is absolute power and 
holiness enthroned on high. As Son, he is a 
man like unto ourselves, only sinless ; our advo- 
cate and mediator, purchasing a possible salva- 



170 Through Borne On. 

tion for us, who are in some sort liis fellow- 
creatures, for lie is Son of Man as well as God, 
and his mother is woman and the Mother of 
God. As Holy Ghost, he is Comforter and 
Teacher, and has been seen on earth as a dove 
and as flame. There is a certain visibility at- 
taching to him under all three of these divisions; 
but it is especially as the Son that he is near to 
us and convenient to our desire. The proper 
deity of Christ is a monstrous anthropomoi-pliism 
and essentially irreverent; yet is it a genuine 
religious tenet, though reverence, which it vio- 
lates, is one of the primary elements of religion. 
Christianity soon developed out of its primitive 
unitarian faith. Unitarianism is less -religious 
than Evangelicalism, Evangelicalism less reli- 
gious than Catholicism. All Protestantism, in- 
deed, is a falling away from religion and from 
the idea of God. It enthrones the human mind 
instead of God ; makes the individual man supe- 
rior to the supposed divine external authority. 
Keligion, it is true, is self-assertion ; for in it 
man asserts his own nature and worships it as 
God : but this radical self-assertion of Kelio;ion 
is of a subtle sort. Protestantism is self-assertion 
in a grosser kind : it is open revolt and declara- 
ration of independence. The Devil was the first 
"Whig, said Dr. Johnson, He might as correctly 
have said the Devil was the fii'st Protestant, 



Through Home On. 171 

declares the trenchant and logical Dr. O. A. 
Brownson. - 

Catholics are of all Christians the most gen- 
uine religionists and worshippers of God. Espe- 
cially do they excel in the characteristically reli- 
gious worship of the Son, with whom they come 
into daily sensible contact, as the heretic hardly 
can, in the sacrament of the altar. 

Thus is desire fed by all the Christian dog- 
mas, and thus is it the underlying inspiration of 
them all. But desire is not a rational founda- 
tion for belief; and it was impossible for my 
belief to abide on such a corner-stone long. If 
I were to have a religion, it had to be one com- 
manding what Coleridge calls "the full acqui- 
escence of my intellect and the deep consent of 
my conscience." In reaching Catholicism I had 
exhausted the other religions of the Christian 
name in their principle and seed. With Cath- 
olicism, then, my progress as a Christian pilgrim 
ceased. When that was renounced, there was 
no temptation, or possibility even, for me to go 
back to the broken cisterns. I had attained to 
the light of conclusions in agreement with the 
facts of consciousness and the surrounding uni- 
verse, and supported by reason, to which thence- 
forth I have never been ashamed or afraid to 
turn for their test. It is not sufficient for me to 
desire a thing : if there be no better reason for 



172 Through Borne On, 

it tlian that, I cannot believe it. Thus I reject 
all religions, "while I love and reverence goodness 
and truth, whether clothed in religious or in un- 
religious forms. 



Mr. Capes says {To Rome and Back, pp. 
853-4), " Of course, as soon as I was satisfied 
that my difficulties were unanswerable, I ceased 
quietly to communicate in the Koman Church ; 
but I said nothing to those many kind hearts 
which would have been wrung with pain," &c. 
I adopted a similar course upon finding that I 
was no longer a Catholic. I quietly dropped the 
practice of religion, and for a long time held my 
peace upon the change. A strong motive to this 
course was in the lively remembrance that re- 
mained to me of the taunts I had been subjected 
to for not standing still in my tracks as a Pro- 
testant. I determined to keep my own counsel 
now, and to be sure of myself and of my ground 
all round to the horizon before I spoke again. 
The desire to save others pain was also largely 
influential in my case, as in that of Mr. Capes. 
I continued my search for truth and peace, be- 
sieging both earth and heaven in the quest. 
There was indeed an interrupting period, begin- 
ning soon after my relinquishment of religious 
stimulation, in which a bad reaction was threat- 



Through Borne On. 173 

ened, and when there was at least a langnisliing 
of mj moral and spiritual affections, attended by 
consequences to be regretted : of which I must 
speak hereafter, in order that mj word shall be 
faithful and full, and that it may do the service 
I wish it to do to some of my fellow-men. Some 
general observations which I have to make on 
the moral aspects of Christianity and Freethink- 
ing may fitly find a place here. 

There is a high obligation to prefer light to 
darkness; but it is important to beware of the 
perils which are incidental to coming out of dark- 
ness into light. "We should not after the manner 
and advice of some, hug darkness because of 
perils in the change ; but we should be on our 
guard against the perils, and watch ourselves 
closely, that we fall not, to the injury of ourselves 
and others and the scandal of a noble cause. 
I am always grieved to the heart when I find a 
Liberal inclined to use profane or unclean lan- 
guage, or seeking his pleasure in. immoral acts 
or companionship, or showing bigotry and unchar- 
itableness in any of their shapes. I have known 
many Christians given to such courses ; but in 
them the outbreaks of bodily and mental cachexy, 
though of course producing their natural mischiefs 
in other respects, are not allowed, where Chris- 
tians predominate, as with us, to redound to the 
discredit of Christianity; for as the maxim of 



174: Through Home On, 

monarcliists is, The King can do no wrong, so 
the maxim of Cliristians is, Christianity can da 
no wrong ; and all Christian badness is fathered 
upon something distinct from Christianity itself. 
But Freethinking is not yet orthodox; and so 
the failings and vices of its professed followers 
furnish a greatly-enjoyed triumph to its enemies, 
who loudly proclaim such things as demonstrat- 
ing the iniquity of Freethinking ; which cannot 
in its turn fall back upon the sanctity of a close 
corporation, and is unprotected by approved 
maxims of indemnity, like those of the monarch- 
ists and Christians. Clearly, this state of affairs 
imposes an additional and a very special obli- 
gation on Freethinkers to lead virtuous and ex- 
emplary lives, as happily so many of them do. 
Let conscientious Liberals lay this thought to 
heart, and extend its influence among their fel- 
lows as widely as possible. The best part of 
Christianity is its continual appeal to conscience. 
This it was that gave it so great an ultimate ad- 
vantage in its early struggles with less effective 
spiritual agencies ; and this it is which prolongs 
its life and sway in spite of its obsolescent dogmas 
and of its cramping and wounding of conscience 
itself with the pressure of bonds which never 
give way till they are broken. As long as an 
age or a race that has received Christianity is not 
above the level of that religion, that age or race 



Through Rome On. 175 

will be the better for having it. The Middle 
Ages were not the worse for the very corrupt 
Christianity which then prevailed in Europe and 
a part of the East. They were on the contrary 
much the better for it, with all its corruption; 
and if it had not been very corrupt, so as to be 
brought into the necessary adaptedness to existing 
Christian humanity, it could not have done half 
the good it did. So, now, the improved Chris- 
tianity of our day, which is as different a thing 
from mediaeval as it is from primitive Christianity, 
is in such agreement with the general mind of 
Christian people as to be very serviceable and 
necessary to those people, and even play the 
part of a schoolmaster to lead them to Free- 
thought. I need not point out here, that to re- 
cognise it in this just light is very different from 
bowhig down to it as a supernatural revela,tion, 
or acknowledging it to be absolutely true and 
destined to be the final regenerator and perfecter 
of mankind. Christianity, though not " the civ- 
iliser" that Christian writers call it, has been 
one important agent in the civilisation of the 
world, and still has a part, though a much less 
distinguished part than formerly, to perform in 
the advancing work. It may be that there will 
never be a higher religion ; but about this word 
religion there clusters such a haze of various 
meanings and meaningless thoughts, that it might 



176 Through Home On, 

almost seem to correspond to the Scotchman's 
definition of metaphysics ; so we will not dwell 
on that point now. That Christianity is to pass 
away and to be superseded by the higher teach- 
ings of science and regenerated natural morality, 
and that this latter regime is to constitute the 
Orthodoxy of the future, with all, and more than 
all, the prestige and power for good which Keli- 
gion has so long enjoyed, is an assurance vouched 
for by the earnest that we hold in our hands. 
In the meantime, it is good that the religion 
should live and play the part that yet remains to it. 
It should be the desire of freethinkers, not to 
destroy Christianity, but to see it outgrown. 
The outgrowing process must be gradual, that it 
may be complete and beneficent. Freethought 
is not iconoclasm, but regeneration. I have been 
asked if I thought that people would be the bet- 
ter for putting away Christianity and taking Free- 
thought in place of it. I reply, if they were pre- 
pared for it, undoubtedly they would be the bet- 
ter for the exchange : if not prepared for it, they 
would not be the better, but probably much the 
worse. If they received the soul and habit of 
Freethought along with the body and name, they 
would be making a great advance in ceasing to 
be Christians. But this could be only when 
Christianity no longer harmonised with their na- 
tures, and Freethought succeeded to the harmony 



Through Rome On, 17T 

winch its predecessor had lost. They would not 
be the better for being divorced from their reli- 
gion without having the habit of genuine Free- 
thought to take the religion's place. Genuine 
Freethought is a product of the growth and train- 
ing of moral and intellectual constitution togeth- 
er. There are, in relation to this highest sense 
of the term, comparatively few genuine Free- 
thinkers yet in the world; though a vast and 
continually increasing multitude are in the train- 
ing-schools of Freethought. The rejection of 
religion does not make a genuine freethinker. 
He is not free in his thouo-hts who is in bondao-e 
to the idea of opposing religion, or to the mis- 
leading impulses of his own coarseness, his igno- 
rance, bigotry, disposition to force his own will 
and opinions down other people's throats, or to 
be profane and licentious, in the abandon of his 
fancied freedom, to show his contempt for religion 
which condemns profaneness and licentiousness. 
Truth leads to freedom, and effectually makes 
free at last ; but the rejection of falsehood is not 
the securing of truth. All falsehood rejected, 
truth alone remains; but one may reject the 
special falsehood and slavery of religion only to 
give one's self up to a practically more hurtful 
falsehood and slavery still. The Freethinker, 
who has undertaken to be the keeper of his own 
conscience, is of all men the most obliged to have 



178 Through Home On. 

a true conscience, to follow its liglit, and to set 
a good example. It is one of his special duties 
to correct the wide-spread conceit that morality 
is the property of religion, that an unreligious 
man must be a bad man : and he fails in this 
duty signally when he lends himself to immoral 
courses. He, more than all men besides, should 
abhor such things. In avoiding, and abhorring 
them, he is not pandering to the false prejudices 
of believers: to respect and practise morality 
and decorum is not false prejudice ; and we are 
not to go wrong in our conduct in order to be 
different from people whose errors of opinion we 
condemn. To do so is to indulge bad feeling, 
not to follow truth. It is shameful for such 
scandal to be brought by any one on the name 
of Liberal. He who rejects religion on just 
grounds does not reject morality along with it. 
Morality is not bound to religion. It is what it 
has been well called ; the sum of human experi- 
ence. On the chief points of morality good men 
are in general agreement. There may be specu- 
lative differences as to the sanction of morality ; 
some deriving it from a Divine personal will, while 
others find it in the nature of things, or rest it 
on the appreciable basis of utility. The essential 
thing, the bond of humanity, the sense of right 
and duty, the flower of civilisation, is one for all 
men. There is no nobler quality in Freethought 



Through Home On. 179 

than its constant appeal to the individual con- 
science ; and this brings Freethinkers and Chris- 
tians together on one side ; for, as I have said, 
this is the best part of Christianity. The Free- 
thinker has the same monitor in his breast that 
the Christian has in his. Let Christians continue 
to warn everyone that nameth the name of Christ 
to depart J^rom. iniquity^ and let Extra-Chris- 
tians show the world not only that Freethinkers 
can be good men, but that Freethinking makes 
men good.^ 



" I was led," says Mr. Capes, " face to face 
with the notorious fact that it has not pleased 
God to grant us that clear knowledge of the doc- 
trines or duties tauglit by Christ for which we 
naturally so eagerly long,"^ Now, with all re- 
spect for Mr. Capes, it does appear to me, that 
when a man has the good sense and courage to 
face this fact and understand what it means, it is 
time for him to cease talking about Christ as the 

» II Tim. ii. 19. 

2 It is well said by Dr. Matthew Arnold (Preface to 
St. Paul and Protestantism), tliat " the very sign and con- 
dition of each new stage of spiritual progress is — increase 
ofiask.^^ Brother Liberals, let us not shrink from the in- 
crease of task that is upon us, but gird our loins man- 
fully for its faithful performance. 

3 To Pome and Back, p. 357. 



180 Through Rome On. 

revealer and vaunting Christianity as the one 
Divine Kevelation, and even to be diffident, at 
least, of calling himself a Christian. These 
terms all have their fixed and clear-enough 
meanings, and the last of them, Christian, is an 
historical term. If Mr. Capes and others whom 
I could name, admitting the " notorious fact " 
stated, may with propriety continue to call them- 
selves Christians, as I do not presume to deny 
they may, then surely the history that is making 
now-a days has a fine revolutionary smack about 
it — that is all. Some distinguished lights of the 
Broad Church, whose writings please and edify 
me greatly, have, I find, scarcely any more defi- 
nite theism to stand on than I have. To call 
one's self a Christian, in such a case, is, I suppose, 
a matter of taste as well as of conscience. As a 
matter of taste and conscience both, I refuse to 
call myself a Christian. I feel no assurance that 
Jesus ever existed. If there was such a person, 
his history and his doctrine alike are extremely 
uncertain. If anything about him is clear, it is 
that he did not fulfil the conditions of the 
Hebrew Messiah, or Christ ; and finally, that 
Hebrew notion of the Christ is to my mind a 
vain and superstition imagination. How, then, 
can I call myself a Christian ? As to persons 
who believe that Jesus really flourished eighteen 
hundred years ago, and was the highest teacher 



Through Rome On. 181 

and exemplar of spirituality the world has ever 
had ; but who, like me, reject the messianic con- 
ception, the Christ doctrine of the Jews : — per- 
haps they may rightly claim the Christian name, 
though I may not. In speaking of this class I 
have had others in view rather than Mr. Capes. 
I do not know what are his views about Jesus. 
He tells us in bold print that he has gone " back " 
to the Church of England ; which he perceives 
to be different from primitive Christianity, but 
approves as the onl}^ millennial order in which 
the lion of freethought can lie down with the 
lamb of Christian piety " without a shattering of 
the existing formularies of our forefathers," and 
with the " hope gradually to reconcile the past 
with the future." I take leave of Mr. Capes 
with cordial good-will and thanks for his hints 
and companionship ; seeing plainly indeed from 
his book that he never really entered into the 
spirit of the Catholic religion, but more than half 
disposed to join in his praise of the English 
Church as the broadest of ecclesiastical bodies ; 
and leaning to it myself, as I lean to so many 
things English, though never, even in my dreams, 
connecting it with the Apostles. 



A word now as to the descriptive term 
" Extra-Christian " in the title of this book. It 



1S2 Through Home On. 

is not, like " Cliristian," an historic term. It is 
not classical, nor precise, nor in general use with, 
a clear conventioDal meaning to it. Perhaps it 
would even be ambiguous without this explana- 
tion. As I use it, it does not mean very Chris- 
tian indeed^ but heyond Christianity ; and cor- 
responds to the abverb On in the first part of 
the title. I may be said to have been infra- 
Christian while finding my way To Home / I 
was Christian while I stayed there ; and from 
the point at which Mr. Capes turned Back and 
I went On^ I have been Extra- Christian, 



When, after that memorable discovery in the 
State Library, I found myself free to read and 
think and to follow the pursuit of Truth whither- 
soever it should lead me, my mind stretched 
itself, as it were, with a cheeriug sense of capa- 
city for fresh effort with a better result to follow. 
Having perused without satisfaction some of the 
works of the old-fashioned deists, and some 
coarsely written and ill-printed American publica- 
tions of the anti-christian type, I got hold of Mr. 
Fronde's very differently conceived Ifemesis of 
Faith^ and found it most interesting and helpful. 
Seeing at the end of the book a list of John 
Chapman's Liberal publications, I sent to London 
for several of them, embracing Mr. Greg's Creed 



Through Hovie On. 183 

of Christendom, Mr. Foxton's Popular Chris- 
tianity, and tlie Martineau-Atkinson Letters 
already mentioned ; none of which, I believe, 
had then been reprinted in America. In the 
last-named book I was delighted to strike upon a 
vein of inquiry and observation which had for 
some time warmly interested me. It had hap- 
pened to me to learn something of the true mira- 
cles of Animal Magnetism, which had greatly 
helped me in dealing with the apocryphal ones 
of the theologians ; and I had grieved over the 
attitude of so large a proportion of cultivated 
people, particularly among men of science, 
towards a domain of philosophical inquiry not in- 
ferior to any in interest and importance, nor in 
materials for the scientific method to work out 
to the grandest and most beneficent results. The 
mischievous poaching on this domain by sciolists 
and vulgar pretenders, a natural consequence of 
its neglect by the class that ought to explore it, 
and the general ignoring (to use Boyle's word in 
its only legitimate sense) of the subject by wri- 
ters congenial to my own mind, made the timely 
acquaintance with the Letters most agreeable 
and beneficial. Critics of the work seem to me 
prone to overlook a point plainly enough stated 
in its preface : that the design in publishing this 
correspondence between two friends was to make 
its suggestiveness available for certain minds 



184 Through Home On. 

that were by previous study and direction fitted 
for tlie communication. In tliis light I can tes- 
tify to its usefulness. I will here add, that I was 
assured by Miss Martineau herself, in 1858, that 
the reports so industriously propagated, of the 
loss of friends, &c., from the publication of the 
Letters^ were utterly without foundation.^ 

Among other books which I read at this time 
with lasting advantage, were the Life of Blanco 
White, and Conversations of Goethe with Ecker- 
mann. The latter, recommended to me by one 
eminent in wisdom and in literary fame, was, I 
may observe, my introduction to the mind of the 
great Goethe; who, following Sliakspeare and 
Bacon, must here be homaged as crowning a 
fresh epoch in my reading life. ISTot much later 
I made acquaintance with the Positive Philoso- 
phy of Auguste Comte, in the excellent com- 
pendious translation by Harriet Martineau. 



^ These injurious reports, with other misstatements, 
were published in the first, and I think also in the 
second, edition of Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte. 
Subsequently Mrs. Gaskell made what corrections she 
could; but the mischief was done. I never was person- 
ally acquainted with the gifted woman who wrote Jane 
Eyre; but I have trustworthy information that while her 
intentions were always just, she often mistook her fancies 
for facts, and spoke of them accordingly. 

N. B. — Since the remarks in the text and note on this 
page were written, Miss Martineau has died; and her 



Through Rome On. 185 



It is necessary to tlie completeness of this 
record that it should include an episode which I 
cannot recall without a degree of sorrow, though 
I feel that to it I am beholden for increase of 
self-knowledge and self-control, and for a stronger 
sense of the connexion of those qualities with 
an abiding virtue and happiness. Having been 
bound so long by the spirit and practice of an 
ascetic religion, I did not come into the freedom 
of my own soul and body without the danger 
common in such cases of a reaction in the oppo- 
site direction of loose living. In giving up the 
Catholic religion I had parted with a very lofty 
theocratic conception. There is an unfailing 
lowering of the moral tone, I think, upon the 
loss of a high ideal. The depression may not 
immediately succeed the loss ; it may be but 
temporary, and in happy instances may be very 
soon removed : but it is sure to occur. To a 
young man, lacking the sober experience of ma- 
turity, and accustomed hitherto to look to super- 
natural perils on the one hand, and supernatural 
helps on the other, the realities of life, its real 
perils and safeguards and salvation, are for a 



Autobiography is now published, to speak for her with a 
better voice than mine. 



186 Through Home On. 

time below tlie level of his strained mental eye- 
sight ; and there is a sore, weary, feeling in him, 
after the struggle and disappointment he has gone 
through, as if the best and highest things, which 
have been falsely embodied for him all this time, 
had no real existence, or were vain objects of 
human pursuit. It has been drilled into him as 
the teaching of religion, that Right is to be fol- 
lowed for fear of hell, and for the sake of an 
" exceeding great reward " in heaven. This sel- 
fish and mercenary principle, which by a common 
Christian perversion is called noble and necessary 
to good living, has blurred and weakened his 
conscientiousness to a degree from which it can 
not recover in a day, and has prepared him to 
yield to the seductions of pleasure as the only 
sufficiently stimulating substitute for the broken 
promises of faith. Something of this experience 
I had, not without scath and food for repentance; 
but for a passing stage only, and mingled wdth 
elements of moral growth which, unless for the 
thought of possible injury to others by an un- 
worthy example, would leave small occasion for 
sadness in the retrospect. It became apparent 
to me that Pleasure is a deceitful guide, and 
that I was doing wrong to give so nmch heed to 
her persuasions. Conscience asserted itself with 
renewed power, now that it was no longer in 
chains. I tried — from that time to this I have 



Through Rome On. 187 

constantly tried — to know and to do my duty, 
not for fear of Grod or Devil, not to be paid ex- 
orbitantly for it hereafter ; but beca^use it is 

EIGHT. 



From tlie period now readied in this recen- 
sion there are no further struggles of mind to be 
recorded. For the last twenty-five years there 
has been, I believe, no essential change in my 
views on the subject of religion. The design has 
been carried out of showing how these views 
were attained by regular and sure stages, devel- 
oping the argument and the workings of tem- 
perament together. "When one has thought so 
earnestly and so long upon this important sub- 
ject, and is so penetrated with a conviction of 
the mischiefs of the old teaching, and of the 
value and beauty of the truth that is taking its 
place, can his conscience let him be silent, so as 
to leave it a matter of doubt or misconception 
which side he is on ? Is he not bound, if a re- 
spectable person possessed of any tolerable gift 
of expression, to give his authenticated testimony 
as a contribution, small though it be, to the ac- 
cumulated records of mental experience ? The 
number of minds uiat will recognise my position 
as what they have themselves arrived at, or are 
tending to, is becoming larger and larger every 



188 Through Rome On. 

day ; and what I write now under a ban will at 
no very distant future be commonplace and daily 
bread of tlie popular intelligence. In the mean- 
time the impulse must be supplied to such as 
wait for it. Some who read these pages will 
turn away frowning and shaking their heads. 
They will turn away, but not from a sense of un- 
reasonableness in what I have written : rather 
the contrary. They will fear that it is reasonable, 
and their established modes of thinking will 
make the suspected truth unpleasant to them. 
Some of these will find themselves recurring to 
the subject at a future time, and looking at it in 
a better light ; when they will understand me as 
they cannot now, in the first shock and resent- 
ment of collision. Seeing that I do not class 
myself with the theists, some who are fond of 
calling names will be swift to pronounce that I 
am an atheist. I am too old and seasoned by 
this time to be afraid of a name ; and if this 
reprobated name atheist seem fitting, or if it 
make up to any pious souls in ever so small a 
degree for the impracticableness of burning me 
at the stake, I ought not to begrudge its applica- 
tion, and I am not likely to breathe less freely 
nor to sleep less soundly on account of it. It is 
right, however, that I siiould say that the name 
does not seem to me suited to my case. "While 
I cannot join theists, in or out of the churches, 



Through Rome On. 189 

in affirming a specific Deity behind E'ature, 
neither can I join atheists in denying the possi- 
bility of such a Being ; still less do I deny what 
Parker calls the quality of God. This I find and 
reverence in Nature, without pretending to know 
of any source for it beyond. There is to my ap- 
prehension a very beautiful truth in that text 
which has been so perversely interpreted : " He 
that hath seen me liath seen the Father." Good- 
ness as a force is reflected to us in the best of 
our fellow-creatures. In the good man we see 
the Father^ in the only possible or desirable 
sense. Luther says somewhere — I cannot hunt 
up the passage now — that that is God on which 
the heart rests with trust, hope, and love. When 
we are drawn and built up in the right by any 
magnet of righteousness whatever, there is God 
for us, and thenceforth we have seen and known 
the Father. What avails it to quarrel about the 
form or time of the incarnation ? It was Yishnu, 
it was Christ, if you will. I care not for your 
names and dates and metaphysics : the Word is 
made flesh and dwells among us still. 

I believe, then, in the quality of God ; and I 
have tried to show how the theme of the Infinite 
takes efi'ect upon my mind. I can no more 
adore a magnified human image with the culti- 
vated theist than I can a wooden or stone fetich 
with the barbarous theist: but in rejecting the 



190 Through Rome On. 

former object of worship I no more deny what is 
inconceivable, nor what of Truth and Goodness 
is connoted in the image, than I deny inscrutable 
Power (not to speak here of Goodness and Truth) 
in rejecting the fetich. I am conscientiously 
obliged to put away the conventional verbiage 
about " design" and " First Cause "; which shocks 
me w^ith its horrible familiarity and pettiness on 
the most awful of themes, and thus seems to me 
as irreverent as unphilosophical. Definite indi- 
vidualised forms of existence of which our lim- 
ited faculties are fitted to take cognisance we 
may indeed question and pursue in search of 
causal conditions; for by their mutableness, and 
by our ability, such as it is, to grapple with 
them, they are pronounced effects ; but it is a 
hasty and pernicious notion that existence of 
itself necessarily implies a cause. Only change 
involves such an implication. Events imply 
causes: simple existence does not imply any 
such thing. If it did, the imagined First Cause, 
being an existence, would require a cause, i. e., 
would be no real First Cause. The finite is the 
content of the infinite : that is all we can say. 
Earths, suns, systems, with all their animate and 
inanimate productions, are finite forms, and we 
may have our nebular theories and what not, to 
account for them ; but these, vast and overpow- 
ering as they are to our minds, are mere grains 



Through Hoine Or. 191 

in the Universe ; whose boundlessness exhausts 
our range of causes and our faculty of conception 
itself; so that we reach at last, not an outside 
Creator, but, as Strauss declares,^ a self-centred 
Cosmos. The design argument puts the cart 
before the horse, mistakes the impression for the 
seal, and, in all the instances adduced, invites us 
to contemplate the perfect image of imperfec- 
tion. To ascribe the adaptations in nature to 
intelligent design, which is a human attribute, 
is to invite criticism of that in which all are in- 
terested ; and it then appears that the " design,*' 
or the execution of it, is of a low order, denying, 
instead of betokening, Supreme Wisdom or Al- 
mightiness. Indeed, the advocates of the Paley- 
an doctrine find themselves driven into a sort of 
remonstrance against present injustice by the 
Deity, and claim damages from him on that 
account. This is one of their standing argu- 
ments for a future life. All such views are pain- 
fully repulsive to me. The making of man and 
his concerns the grand topic and puzzle of the 
Divine counsels ; the portentous nature ascribed 
to each individual member of the human family, 
even to the extent of regarding the new-born 
soul, in contradiction to philosophy, as an addi- 
tional force in the universe; the supernatural 

1 TU Old Faith and the New: Amer. ed. Vol. II. p. 133. 



192 Through Home On. 

importance claimed for the little ball in the 
heavens on which we live, the satellite of a sun 
that is itself many times less than the known 
star Sirius, and is lost in its insignificance amid 
the galaxies of infinite space : — all this pitiful 
clinging to the pseudo-philosophy and supersti- 
tion of past ages, with all the festering conceits 
and bigotries that it keeps alive, sickens my 
heart, and compels the protest of my understand- 
ing and will as I record it here. But I set up 
no presumptuous dogma of my own in turn. If 
I may on some accounts seem to belong to the 
atheists, with more show of propriety still may I 
on other accounts be reckoned among the theists. 
I disown both names, theist and atheist, as inap- 
propriate in such a case as mine. I declare that 
I have not, and cannot have, any dogma what- 
ever on Origin and Absolute Being. ^ I turn 
away as decidedly from the dogma, or the dog- 
matic spirit, of the atheist as from that of the 
theist, on a subject which I feel a solemn assu- 

1 " "When I attempt to give tlie power wliicli I see man- 
ifested in the Universe an objective form, personal or 
otherwise [other], it slips away from me, declining all 
intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save poetically, 
use the pronoun ' he ' regarding it ; I dare not call it a 
*mind'; I refuse to call it a 'cause.' Its mystery over- 
shadows me, but it remains a mystery ; while the object- 
ive frames which my neighbours try to make it fit, simply 
distort and desecrate it." — Tyndall. 



Through Rome On. 193 

ranee is infinitely too high for knowledge, and 
infinitely too sacred for levity and assumption, 
on the part of man. TVTien men lay down what 
seem to me absurd and contradictory theories, I 
do not pretend to respect them as even possible 
truth; and I may think it my duty to protest 
against them, at least to the extent of declaring 
that they are impossible and shocking to my 
own mind ; but I do not oppose to them any 
theories of my own about what can never be 
known. No doubt the two terms theist and 
atheist are in the sharpest antithesis, and one is 
naturally suggestive of the other ; but it by no 
means follows that they cover the whole ground. 
There is most certainly a tertium quid; and 
this tertium quid'diOQ?, really seem to me to fur- 
nish the only position which a thinker can oc- 
cupy on the subject without departing from phi- 
losophy and reason. Theists that have broken 
with the old religious traditions find it impossi- 
ble to retain the God doctrine in its integrity, 
or as it is still asserted by the Church and cher- 
ished in the popular imagination. They modify 
or rehnquish the personality of God, and, pressed 
by the problem of Evil, give up omnipotence as 
an attribute of the Divine Being, or, as in a re- 
markable book of the day,' part with goodness, 

» Liberty^ Equality, Fraternity : Amer. ed., pp. 310-11. 



194 Through Rome On. 

or ruling benevolence, in tlie Supreme. John 
Stuart Mill/ favouring theism, sketched a lim- 
ited Deity as the possible Lord of the universe. 
This is the tendency on one side of theism; 
while on the other it tends to check free thought 
and carry its disciples back into the mire and 
confusion of the churches. I do not deny the 
possibility or conceivableness of a limited Divine 
Being as the Author of Nature ; but I declare 
that the supposition seems to me uncalled for 
and unsupported by any sound reasoning what- 
ever ; and it has long been clear to my mind, 
that every straining after a second Infinite — • 
Nature being practically infinite for us — fails, as 
all human striving must fail, to solve the Mys- 
tery of Existence, and in its utmost reach carries 
us no farther than to the footstool of a mighty 
but still finite Demiurgus, behind whom the 
awful curtain hangs impenetrable as ever. 

I have religiosity enough. By my original 
constitution I am of the sort that crave and cre- 
ate gods and guardian angels for themselves. I 
greatly enjoyed such beings of the imagination 
before I found out that they are only imaginary; 
and communion with the angelic spirits was per- 
haps as congenial and helpful as communion 
with God. No one would more highly value 

i Three Essays on Beligion. 



Through Rome O71, 195 

the supports of a true religion than I should ; 
but I cannot accept the Christian mythology as 
true any more than I can the Pagan ; nor am I 
the kind of eclectic that can select from the 
moral and spiritual side of Christianity what is 
not even peculiar to that system, and call the 
arbitrary selection a genuine, special, and divine 
religion. E-eligion, as I conceive it, always has 
relation to the gods, or to some invisible per- 
sonal or ^t^<25^personal Power, distinct from and 
superior to Nature and its laws. I have no 
knowledge or instinct of such a Power. I do 
not deny the existence of such, but I see no just 
ground for asserting it. It is my deliberate and 
solemn conviction, that the subject is above the 
sphere of our human intelligence ; and that dog- 
matism, at any rate, if not all speculation, con- 
cerning it is irreverence, folly, and mischief. 
This strong impression is confirmed in me when, 
looking over all the world and through all the 
periods of its history, I find that the God idea — 
the personification of human attributes as Divine 
and Absolute, that refined idolatry in various 
degrees, from which, seeing it in this light, I am 
obliged to turn away — has always and every- 
wliere led men into extravagance of imagination 
and grievous perversions of conduct. I do not 
deny that it is associated with great good also, 
and that it is a necessary part of human devel- 



196 Through Borne On, 

opment : but I cannot perceive in it any ray of 
supernatural divinity, nor acknowledge it in any 
of its iorms, from fetichism to monotheism, to be 
a veracious and satisfying corner-stone of reli- 
gion. 

In saying that I should value a true religion, 
I must not be misunderstood to mean that 1 
should be glad if Christianity according to its 
time-honoured traditions vrere true. A thousand 
thousand times no ! ]^o thing could be more 
dreadful, more deplorable, than that. A millen- 
nium of Neros and Caligulas over the human 
race were a blessing above all estimation in 
comparison with the God and the " scheme " of 
regular Christian divinity still preached in Cath- 
olic and Protestant churches the world over. 
But if, instead of the God in imitation of whom 
the Inquisition was founded and worked, and 
the Calvinists burnt Servetus, and Cromwell 
massacred the Irish at Drogheda and Wexford ; 
and in farther and farther remove from whom, 
and from his teachings to the " chosen people " 
of old and to the Church in later times, we are 
reforming our legal codes, admitting the " reign 
of law" in nature, and giving up the "conflict 
with science"; — if instead of the monstrous Deity 
and the mythical religion that have had their 
day and are in the eveniog of it now, there were 
indeed a powerful and lioly Being, our Maker, 



Through Home On, 197 

Providence, and loving Father, and a reasonable 
worship of affection, gratitude, and well-founded 
trust, — that were indeed a thing to be glad of 
and a joy forever. I do not want " a God to 
glorify " ; but one to love and thank, and to 
derive both spiritual and material help from, 
would be very precious. (The refined theista 
who say that we may resort to God for spir- 
itual but not for material help, contradict the 
instinct on which they rely; and if I did not 
feel sure that their real worship is different from 
what they preach, I should have little sympathy 
with their desire.) I do not turn away from 
theism because I am thankless, or self-sufficing, 
or less spiritually needy than other men. I turn 
away from it because it seems to me untrue. 
The balance of probability, to which its advo- 
cates lay claim, is, I think, decidedly against it. 
It explains nothing, but only raises fresh and 
more terrible mysteries. A good God* and a 
communication from him I have admitted to be 
desirable ; but desire for a thing is no proof that 
the thing is attainable, or even that it has any 
other than an abstract existence in the mind. 
Taking actual religion, I cannot believe. I can 
not without lying to my own heart and under- 



» Who, however, would necessarily be a finite being, 
for us to bold the supposed relation to bim. 



198 Through Rome On, 

standing call Christianity essentially different in 
its origin and nature from the other religions. 
I cannot believe in their divinity ; neither can I 
believe in its. To me, all religions are alike 
human evolutions. The unwisdom of ratinsj one 
of them above the rest as divinely superior in its 
origin and essence, is as clear as anything can 
possibly be. This was the conclusion I arrived 
at many years ago ; and every hour of reflection 
since, with all the reading and conscience-search- 
ing that I have kept up, has confirmed me in it. 
It is my duty to say to all who will listen to me, 
that the conclusions I have reached and here 
faithfully recorded, are to me a source of peace 
and satisfaction such as I was never able to feel 
in the acceptance of religious doctrines after my 
nineteenth or twentieth year. I can never while 
I live cease to rejoice over my deliverance from 
the murky, morbid, and unspeakably painful 
atmosphere of religious teaching. The results 
of my Christian and extra-Christian experience 
will shock many good people, as well as a still 
larger number perhaps who are not particularly 
good. To the former class I can only repeat 
that reason and conscience in my case have com- 
jpelled the renunciation of those traditions which 
hold possession of their minds as sacred and 
fundamental ; and that, morally and spiritually, 
they and I are not, or need not be, in a state of 



Through Borne On, 199 

separation. Let me not be judged by sbibbo- 
leths. If by " God" they mean not a magnified 
Man, but the Goodness that cheers and hallows 
life, or the inscrutable Power manifested in us 
and in all things, then I believe in God as firmly 
as they. If by "heaven" they mean not an Ori- 
ental city, but the blessedness of the pure in 
heart, I believe with them in that too. Moral 
obligation is as indefeasible and sacred in my 
eyes as in theirs. I no more require a super- 
natural sanction for its validity than for the 
truth of mathematics. "While I am not able by 
any kind of searching to find out God, in the 
sense of the religions, while I get no glimpse 
whatever of any source of nature, and refuse to 
beguile myself or others with any ingannation or 
pretence on the subject, I have nevertheless as 
deep and as constraining a faith as any theist 
can possibly have, in the holiness and power 
which are in nature as solar life is in the air. 
The sense of duty and the moral habit of right- 
eousness are dearer to me than words can tell ; 
and I draw nigh in spirit to all who love and 
cherish them and show them forth in their lives. 
This principle and this habit make a precious 
spiritual quality, which is distributed, though in 
very unequal degrees, among mankind, and is 
the true light that enlighteneth every man that 
Cometh into the world. I know that many have 



200 Through Rome On, 

a much larger measure of the quaHty than I 
have, and I worship it in them, and would fain 
live with such persons, that their shadow might 
fall upon me every day. I find it in books 
sometimes ; F. "W. Newman's work on The Soul 
for instance, in which the attempt at dogma fails, 
but author and reader " see God "^ together all 
the time. "What religionists call the grace of 
God I call the grace of humanity ; and I seek it 
to purify and fortify my soul. It is one of the 
priceless blessings of the position I have at- 
tained, that I have no longer to draw my skirts 
about me for fear of heterodox contact, but am 
free to welcome and inhale this grace of human- 
ity wherever I find it. Keligious faith separated 
me from my kind : Free-Thought restores rae to 
my proper connexion with it. There is a loose 
understanding of the word religion, in many 
minds, by which it is made synonymous with 
goodness. In tliis sense of the word, I certainly 
do not reject religion, but on the contrary hon- 
our and love it, and desire wifh all my heart to 
practise it. I do not indeed think this is the 
proper meaning of religion ; but I note it here, 
to guard against misconception and misrepre- 
sentation. I have no more doubt of the untruth 
of Christian dogmas than I have of the untruth 
of Braminical dogmas ; nor is there any more of 

» Matt. V. 8. 



Through Borne On, 201 

terror or authority for me in tlie former than in 
the latter. I utterly reject theology, especially 
the patristic and Calvinistic theology which 
claims the name of Orthodox among Christians, 
and which in its distinctive tenets is to me not 
merely false, but loathsome ; so that I cannot be 
content to live or die with any taint of it upon 
me. At the same time, I respect the sincere 
faith of believers, and have no scorn or derision 
for any of their devout practices not in conflict 
with charity. How, indeed, could I, who know 
by experience how nourishing to conscience rites 
may be, and how tenderly sacred they are to the 
souls of believers, — how could I be so forgetful 
of the freshest and purest years of my life as to 
join with the coarse and unfeeling who scoff at 
such things % I am not willing to hurt or offend 
any one by the language I use ; though I will not 
leave my meaning in doubt for fear of doing 
this thing that I do not intend. Reverence is 
one of the strongest principles of my nature, and 
is indeed an important part of the ground on 
which I reject theology. "What is revered by 
others has a claim on my tenderness and forbear- 
ance, however far removed from my own belief. 
For this reason I am not in sympathy with those 
persons who ridicule or despise the faith and 
practices of any religion. I know that in such 
forms are embodied the highest conceptions and 



202 Throicgh Borne On, 

purest aspirations of a vast proportion of man- 
kind; and that tlie forms themselves are in the 
present order indispensable to the souls that 
cling to them. Justice, kindness^ and a regard 
for the highest interests of us all, as well as of 
the cause of truth itself, demand that such things 
should be treated with respect, though never 
that one should pretend to believe in them when 
he does not, or refrain from resisting bj word 
and deed, when occasion calls for it, their false 
claims and encroachments. I am fretted with 
no impatience for the overthrow of Christianity, 
but am content to see men gradually passing 
to a higher plane of thought and morals through 
the sure advance of science. Angry polemics 
are not to my taste. The exposition of princi- 
ples and the sowing of good seed are what I be- 
lieve in and would forward as besi: 1 may. Pub- 
lic opposition to the cherished beliefs of the 
community is a painful attitude to me ; the more 
painful, because so small a part of the commu- 
nity, especially of those minds that I should 
most like to conciliate, will be able at present to 
see my views in their true light and real moral 
relations. I must, however, do my duty, what- 
ever the pain and whatever the consequences. I 
am profoundly convinced of the disabling effect 
of error upon the mind ; that the evil goes be- 
yond the particular error itself, and works dete- 



Through Borne On, 203 

rioration of the whole mental action and moral 
being of the errorist, besides standing constantly 
in the way of the acceptance and diffusion of 
progressively unfolding truth. My observation 
shows me this every day, and keeps me alive to 
the need men have of intercommunication on 
subjects where there is the greatest entangle- 
ment of thought, and, for so many, such a crying 
need of enlightenment. To go on joined to our 
idols when we are sufficiently awakened to sus- 
pect at least that they are idols, is an immoral 
condition that is wide-spread and replete with 
baneful consequences. If many who are in this 
condition are incorrigible Ephraims, others are 
not, but deserve all that can be done for them 
in the way of plain speaking and earnest endea- 
vour. I am deeply impressed with belief that 
the errors of Christian theology are very hurtful, 
that they hinder moral as well as intellectual 
advancement, and call for energetic protest and 
opposition in the right channels for such action. 
I know that there is in Christianity what Jona- 
than Edwards calls " the love of divine things 
for the beauty and sweetness of their moral ex- 
cellence " ; and I admit the redeeming force of 
this element which staves off the fate of destruc- 
tion which would otherwise in our day of light 
speedily overtake the system for its false doc- 
trines and moral distortions ; but the false doc- 



204 Through Borne On. 

trines and moral distortions are not therefore to 
be allowed unquestioned sway. On fitting occa- 
sions the protest of earnest minds is to be re- 
corded against them. Such an occasion arises, 
it seems to me, in the situation in which I find 
myself. I feel that I ought to utter and leave 
on record the thought that is so earnest and 
abiding in me on these subjects. It is surely 
wrong to distrust and be afraid of the conse- 
quences of speaking the truth, and to shrink from 
protesting in proper time and place and spirit 
against the false and wrong, lest some evil 
should ensue from the course. "When the occa- 
sion arises, one should do one's duty by speaking 
out boldly and clearly, leaving consequences to 
take care of themselves. The true is too often 
postponed in tenderness and timid consideration 
towards the false ; and great harm has come of 
such time-serving. The little-thinking part of 
the community are to be prepared for the super- 
seding views which they have hitherto been 
ignorant or afraid of; and how can they be pre- 
pared if the habitual thinkers hold back from 
frank communication with them on the subject? 
There is too little of this kind of communication 
from earnest minded persons who are not profes- 
sional teachers. Every one who has been im- 
pelled by his nature to ponder and learn on 
these matters of universal concernment, and who 



Through Borne On, 205 

lias attained to a strong conviction of his own 
on them, is under a kind of obligation, I think, 
to open himself to others according to the gift 
that is in him. Every one has some gift, every 
one can find some opportunity, every one can do 
something in this way ; and considering how 
many in every community refuse to think for 
themselves on anything that is not business or 
immediate personal convenience, every one who 
is an original thinker beyond these narrow 
bounds is a real power for good if only he be 
sure of himself and have the conscience to dis- 
charge his responsibility aright. The common 
torpidity which allows of the surrender of men's 
minds, — reason and conscience together, — to the 
keeping of others who stand guard over the 
storehouse of religious tradition, is a heart sick- 
ening phenomenon which forbids one to bo shut 
up in himself when he understands what it is. 
My neighbour, an educated and fairly intelligent 
man, scorns the circumstantial account in Hero- 
dotus of the sun's veering from its wonted 
course ; understanding what an upturning of na- 
ture it would have been, and how none could 
have survived to testify to it, or have been born 
to write about it afterwards : in short, how im- 
possible any such thing Was, and how incredible 
such a narrative is to be regarded in our day, 
though carefully recorded by the historian, and 



206 Through Rome On. 

vouched for bj the Egyptian priests. And this 
same fairly intelligent neighbour reads in his 
Eible of a similar event's having happened in 
Palestine to give the Israelites more time to 
slaughter their adversaries/ and again at the 
choice of a Hebrev/ king for a sign that the 
Lord had changed His mind concerning him f 
and these latter accounts my neighbour receives 
with as easy and childlike a faith as if he were 
still in the nursery, or as if he had never learned 
and pronounced upon the intrinsic incredible- 
ness of such fantastic traditions. When these 
stories were originally related, it argued no spe- 
cial torpidity of mind to believe in them. Peo- 
ple had not then the knowledge and quickened 
intelligence to reject them spontaneously. The 
philosophy and the religion of the time were in 
natural agreement. The earth was the centre of 
the universe, and was an extended plain, with 
sun, moon, and stars dancing attendance on 
it. There were no laws of nature. The gods 
who made all things moved all things as they 
pleased at the moment. The sun was but a 
great astral lamp, easily shifted by a divine hand ; 
and though extraordinary, it would not be im- 
possible, for it to come up in the west some 
morning. Supernatural prodigies were as credi- 

1 Josh. X. 13. 2 II Kings xx. 10, 11. 



Through Borne On. 207 

ble as occurrences in nature ; and what was at- 
tested by tlie priests was sacredly unquestion- 
able. All this has been changed for us by the 
advance in general intelligence, except in the 
last point, the sacred unquestionableness of 
priestly attestation ; which survives in the sub- 
missiveness which is still popularly yielded to 
the most absurd and immoral extravagances of 
the Jewish and Christian mythologies ; and it is 
noteworthy that this submissiveness is not, in the 
case of our people, from the old-time slavish fear 
of the sacred order half so much as from the un- 
conscientious torpidity of which I have spoken, 
which locks their minds in willing stagnation on 
the subject of religion, and makes them blind 
obstructives in the pnth of ever-advancing science 
and morals. The marvellousness of people who 
are not much cultivated greatly outruns their 
experience ; and such people easily believe and 
cling to religious traditions. Cultivation is ex- 
tending ; but the mass of men, even in what are 
called enlightened countries, are comparatively 
uncultivated in the higher regions of thought, 
and with them the difficulties of religion are not 
felt BO soon nor so strongly as with a certain 
smaller class. Persons who neither read nor 
think independently are not uncommonly irri- 
tated at the suggestion of an objection to any 
part of the received religious teaching, or any- 



208 Through Rome On. 

thing else that appeals to what would be for 
them so strange an exercise of the thinking pow- 
ers. They are displeased with any appeal of the 
kind ; but many of them are endowed with good 
reasoninoj faculties and with true thousih sluf!:2:ish 
consciences ; and if the appeal be made in the 
right manner, and with the right perseverance, 
those inborn qualities will be aroused from 
their sloth into honourable activity, and the 
shame and mischief of their present condi- 
tion will be lessened day by day. This is a 
consummation so devoutly to be wished, that 
one who can help toward it by speaking out of 
the inspiration of a yet warm personal experi- 
ence should feel it a duty to " attempt the end 
and never stand to doubt." He who according 
to Zschokke's simile has been unable to endure 
the suffocating furnished lodgings of tradition, 
but has had to build his own house for himself, 
ought to have sufficiently learned the lesson that 
other souls need, and that so many are waiting 
to learn. As no imprimatur has to be asked of 
either church or state for free-thinking now, so 
no apology (in the sense of excuse) is needed for 
a book with an honest and earnest purpose in it, 
which any part of the public may be the better 
for at last. The people who will frown upon 
such a publication are the ones who need it 
most. I have been in no haste to speak, but 



Through Rome On. 209 

have long and diligently pondered the subject, 
giving heed to the ablest apologists, old and 
new, on the religious side ; trying myself and 
my views by every possible test ; restraining my 
words till some are dead who would have been 
grieved by their publication : and now, when the 
line of middle life is passed, and I do not feel as 
if I had time for longer waiting, this protest and 
record, which I have desired more and more 
every day for years to make and leave behind 
me, avails itself of the " art preservative" at last. 
If it meets with the condemnation of some whose 
approbation I should highly value, they will not 
be so many as would have condemned me even 
a few years ago ; and I feel thoroughly assured 
that it is only present condemnation I shall have 
to suffer: the future will be with me, or will 
censure only the tameness and incompleteness 
with which I have discharged m^ task. 



The papers which occupy the remaining 
pages of this volume have for the most part been 
selected from my notes and correspondence as 
additional illustrations of the narrative and argu- 
ment contained in the Memoir. ]!Tot more than 
one or two of them, I think, have before appeared 
in print. 



210 Through Rome On. 



"Christianity is not a theory or speculation, 
but a life ; not philosophy of life, but a life and 
a living process. Try it. It has been eighteen 
hundred years in existence ; and has one individ- 
ual left a record like the following : * I tried it 
and it did not answer. I made tho experiment 
faithfully according to the direction; and the 
result has been a conviction of my own credu- 
lity ' ?" — Coleridge. I think that such a record 
as Coleridge here asks about has repeatedly been 
made. I can very sincerely say in my own case, 
that I tried Christianity and it did not answer. 
It does seem to me that I made the experiment 
faithfully according to the direction ; and the re- 
sult was a conviction of my own credulity. It 
would have been moral ruin to persist in the at- 
tempt to believe, or the profession of belief, 
against the protest of my rational nature. Chris- 
tianity is not a life alone, but a theory in connex- 
ion with a life; and the living process is coloured 
and moulded all through by the speculation. 
Every religion is a life, if you will : the living 
process is not peculiar to Christianity. Put 



Through Borne On. 211 

"Islam" for "Christianity," and Coleridge's 
words make as valid a plea for a Moslem as for 
a Christian to utter. The faithful Mohammedan 
may say of his religion not less sincerely and not 
less forcibly than the Christian says of his, that 
it is not a theory but a life ; and that all that is 
necessary to make it answer to any one's needs is 
to try it according to the direction. The reply 
to both Christian and Mohammedan is, that their 
experience is partial, and that they are not dis- 
interested and clear-sighted enough to judge for 
all of their fellow-creatures. 



Says Montalembert {Letters to a Schoolfel- 
low) : " Whenever philosophy gives rise in your 
mind to the slightest doubt, to the most trifling 
hesitation, fly back to your fortress, and rest 
from the fatigues of earthly science among 
the imperishable enjoyments of an humble and 
silent faith." See Henry Rogers's Eclipse of 
Faith for similar advice. Pascal's counsel in 
the same direction is well known. A thoroughly 
ingenuous mind cannot follow the course here 
recommended. "We should still be believing the 
earth to be a plain, and heresy to be the great- 
est of sins, if it had been possible to make such 
blinding counsels triumph up to this time. 
Mental constitution is indeed very various. With 



212 Through Rome On. 

many keenly conscientious souls, blinking an in- 
tellectual difficulty and running away from it to 
entrench themselves in the citadel of faith, as 
Montalembert advises, is as impossible, and is 
felt to be as immoral, as crime itself. The soul 
that can follow Pascal's and Montalembert's and 
Hogers's plan is of a different order, and may 
find peace by quenching the spirit : and such a 
soul, shrinking in terror from its own instincts, 
lays it to the account of a wicked will when one 
refuses to be crucified on a creed. 



There can be no doubt that acting upon a 
predetermined profession of faith, long kept up, 
in connexion with fear and aversion in regard to 
what contradicts the factitious creed, is in many 
cases eventually productive of belief; and in 
this way the will does really mould the under- 
standing. Eeligious faith is a standing crusade 
against reason. 



On the assertion that it is our duty to be- 
lieve in a certain way. This assertion is made 
by persons who intend to deduce from it a moral 
obligation on us to believe in their way. In 
logical value it is equivalent to the assertion that 
it is our duty to have seventy pulsations to the 



Through J2ome On. 213 

minute. Belief is in itself essentially involuntaiy. 
But there are antecedent states and motives out 
of which belief grows and takes effect; and in 
dealing with these the question of moral obliga- 
tion may properly be considered. We are cer- 
tainly bound to deal ingenuously with every 
question which we undertake to consider, and 
not to let any unworthy motive turn us away 
from^ fair balancing of its opposing sides. We 
are bound to enlighten our minds, and to the 
best of our ability to decide justly and truly. 
Some writer has said that " it is not our duty to 
have a right belief — which from our circum- 
stances and capacities may not be in our power 
— but to take jpains in order that we may have 
a right belief." This is true. The error of cer- 
tain religious casuists is not in declaring a gen- 
eral indirect obligation to believe the truth accord- 
ing to the above explanation, but in assuming 
that what seems to them in a particular case to 
be true must necessarily so seem to other minds 
unless those minds be blinded by their own sin- 
fulness. This error, which is the basis of reli- 
gious persecution, and which has borne such ac- 
cursed fruits that one would think it should now 
be universally known in its true nature, and be 
repudiated by all enlightened mankind, remains 
however yet to be extirpated. 

What is one to do when the food provided 



214 Through Home On. 

by the Churcli lias become first chaff and then 
2:)oison to him ? Must he go on chewing and 
sickening and sinking nnder it, for fear God will 
be angr J with him if he leave off ? I could not 
put out or seal up mj eyes so as to avoid seeing 
that the Church was not supernaturally kept 
from going wrong, but did just what one would 
expect of a natm'al human organisation that it 
would do :— blundered and misled its followers 
in some cases, though it conducted them aright 
in others. It requires immense faith to hold to 
the Church in spite of everything ;— ^with natural 
probability and accomplished facts both against 
her. I had not, when it came to the last resort, 
such faith in me. I could not retrace my steps 
and return to the Protestant quagmire. I had 
to go, and I went, out of the other door. 

Religious conversion, involving acceptance or 
change of creed, is never a purely logical process. 
The Church, while not forgetting " motives of 
credibility," holds to a special inclining grace, as 
well as to the donum fidei itself ; and in the 
!New Testament we read of the Father's drawing 
whom he will, and find the sanctifying spirit 
likened to the wind, which hlowtth where it 
listeth^ that is, beyond compulsion or under- 

1 TTie spirit Ireathetli^ runs the Catholic version : spiritus 
ubi spiral vuU. 



Through Home On. 215 

standing by us. In the spirit of faith, seeing all 
sorts of people drawn into the Church, I ascribed 
their conversions, which were often manifestly 
independent of regular ratiocination, to inward 
and inexplicable grace. Men as well as women 
are swayed by their emotions, and are influenced 
by various complex moral agencies besides, in 
adopting a religion for themselves. As situation 
and training, as a rule, determine one's religious 
profession, so when a new or unexpected turn of 
the kind occurs, it may generally be traced, and 
undoubtedly is always due, to certain elements 
of an emotional character, which combine to 
produce a result that may seem to be brought 
about by study and discussion. What a wide 
field of learning and research is covered by po- 
lemics, and how little is it considered what a 
real perscrutation here would be and would in- 
volve : history, its facts and lessons ; philosophy; 
criticism ; language ; ethnology, &c. &c. And 
how all must be moulded and determined by the 
peculiar constitution of the searcher ! Even 
before I durst reason quite freely concerning 
these matters, I felt that I ought not to let the 
condition of any other person's stomach or brain, 
or his inherited tendencies, or outward circum- 
stances, determine the complexion of my opinions. 
In regarding Protestants from a Catholic point of 
view, it was apparent to me that, apart from the 



216 Through Borne On. 

instigation of the Devil, there were controlling 
natural causes, not essentially evil, which attached 
them with a certain sincerity to their false reli- 
gion ; and which were of so insuperable a sort 
that nothing short of a miracle, such as Divine 
Providence did not in general choose to work, 
could effect a conversion to the Catholic faith. 
And in regard to Catholics, at the same time, I 
could not help perceiving that the world and the 
flesh, leaving the Devil out of the question, had 
much to do with their status as members of the 
true Church. They were Catholics in the matrix 
before they were born ; they were born Catholics 
before they received the donumfidei in baptism ; 
and they remained Catholics through the con- 
trolling influence of habit and natural connexions 
as much as through grace. 

Each one who believes finds it so easy and 
natural, and even necessary, to believe in his 
own religion, and so plainly right to disbelieve 
in other people's religions, and to censure other 
people for believing such stupid and monstrous 
things. It is like two hostile sides solemnly 
entoning Te Dewni by turns, for their Providen- 
tial success in slaughtering each other. And 
this thing goes on for ages without the majority 
of mankind finding out the truth of the matter ! 



Through Rome On. 217 



The solemn seriousness of religion has a 
strong attraction for me ; but the levities of reli- 
gion, so to speak, its fables and fancies and con- 
ceits, which are insisted on as part and parcel of 
it, are very repulsive. This weak and hurtful 
side of Christianity was forcibly rebuked by 
Celsus. 



The Providence theory of Bossuet's Univer- 
sal History, while natural from the author's 
point of view, is utterly subversive of true his- 
torical criticism. 

" I must see God in history, or I must not 
look at it at all," says Dr. Dewey. In another 
place he uses " I will " in a similar strain. I 
have very little patience with must and will in 
such cases. They tell the tale of most people's 
belief in religious matters, however. 



The key which supernaturalism presents to 
unlock the mystery of the universe does not lit. 
Catholicism and the sturdier heresies recognise 
Christianity as a concrete historical fact, and 
offer a totally misreading explanation of it. The 



218 Through Home On. 

heterodox or Liberal religionists resolve the tree 
into the grain of mustard seed ; and Christianity 
under their explanation is but a refined baptised 
gentilism. 



GilfiUan says of the Bible : " A Book intrin- 
sically so divine, so simple, so far superior to all 
others, and so adapted to the wants of human 
nature, cannot be imagined to be deceived or to 
deceive others in the relation of facts." A good 
specimen of Christian paralogism is this. Mark 
the latent idolatry which makes obeisance before 
the Book, as a kind of divine being that " can 
not be imagined to he deceived " / The Book, 
whether taken in its entirety as pronounced upon 
by councils of men, or considered in its several 
parts as written, copied, and translated by indi- 
vidual penmen and scholars, is seen to be a hu- 
man production; and so it must at the start 
share with other books the presumption of falli- 
bility and imperfection, which are attributes of 
all human productions. That it is endowed with 
an intrinsic divinity which lifts it out of the 
category of human productions, is a speculation^ 
not a known fact like its naturalness ; and a 
speculation, moreover, which is not only unveri- 
fied and unverifiable, but actually overthrown 
by the falsities and contradictions which the vol- 



Through Rome On, 219 

Time contains. I will remark here as to the 
adaptation of the Book, that though familiar 
with it from my early years, I never discovered 
this quality of it in my own case \ but the spirit- 
ual treatises of later times have proved infinitely 
better adapted to my human nature. 

We are told by ardent Christian advocates that 
the Bible is just what a revelation from God 
should be. The very contrary of this is the truth. 
The Koran, which was prepared in the character 
of a revelation, has much more verisimilitude in 
that light than the Bible, which was not so pre- 
pared by its authors, and which nowhere asserts 
its own divinity, but in several places says just the 
contrary. It is quite clear when the subject is 
dispassionately looked at, that neither Church 
nor Bible shows the light of the Divine Spirit. 
Both are human, man-made, man-bespeaking 
throughout. The Church is what we find other 
human organisations to be : sliowing ignorance 
in her utterances and corruption in her practice 
under the influence of ignorant and corrupt men. 
The Bible is just what w^e find other books to be. 
There is no unfailing Divine accuracy in it, as 
showing God's authorship : it is characterised 
throughout by the defective human traits of the 
hands that indited it. Why, and with what pre- 
tence of assurance, do we select four out of the 
numerous gospels that were current among the 



220 Through Rome On. 

earlier Christians, and, while setting an idolatrous 
veneration on those humanly chosenly four, leave 
the rest to dishonor and oblivion ? 

Izaak "Walton, speaking in a letter to a friend 
of the prayers that he goes to church to bffer, 
Bays, — " They be the litany and collects of the 
Church, composed by those learned and devout 
men whom you and I have trusted to tell us 
which is and which is not the written word of 
God ; and trusted also to translate those Scrip- 
tures into English." That is it. Convenient, 
trouble-saving trust in such local guides as are at 
hand, " learned and devout men " who are sup- 
posed to know the things of God as the Scrip- 
ture declares only the Spirit of God can know 
them,^ is the foundation of Christian faith and 
the ground on which persons are stigmatised as 
infidels and reprobates for a dissenting opinion. 



Since Orthodoxy grew weak and timid, how 
greatly its manners have improved ! But really 
its heart has been touched ; and the improve- 
ment is there as well as on the outside. 

Do you ask me if the Orthodox teaching 
may not possibly be true ? I reply, only on the 
postulate that our primal instincts of justice, 

1 I Cor. ii. 11. 



Through Home On. 221 

trutli, &c., may be deceitfal. If truth may be 
what we call untruth, reason unreason, love hate, 
&c., then Orthodoxy may be true: but if the 
intellectual and moral perceptions are trustwor- 
thy, Orthodoxy is certainly false. 



I have a friend who will speak of any esti- 
mable person as " a good Christian." The same 
confusion of thought lurks in the common ex^ 
pression " pure religion." What is pure religion ? 
Does it lie in 'piety and devotion ? Then Cath- 
olicism has it, as I can testify after years of ex- 
perience of that religion. Is it the Golden Kule 
and elevated morality ? Then the heterodox and 
unbelievers have it as well as the strictest Chris- 
tians ; and Jews and Gentiles had it long before 
either Catholic or Protestant existed. Does it 
depend upon faith in the Atonement and the 
other fundamental tenets of Orthodoxy ? Then 
the woman who ministered to suffering Mungo 
Park in the wilds of Africa had it not ; and the 
author of the General Epistle of James made a 
great mistake in his definition of it ages before her. 

If my memory serves me rightly, it was in 
the person of that precious piece of royal piety 
and villany Louis the Eleventh, that the King of 
France became " his Most Christian Majesty." 



222 Through Rome On. 



I have said tliat the solemn seriousness of 
religion has a strong attraction for me. I have 
a keen sense of the ludicrous in common thinors; 
but any attempt at a burlesque of religion is 
most offensive to my feelings; and I respect 
"Walter Savage Landor for saying that he did not 
like any one who made free with God or the 
ladies. The vulgar ribaldry which finds its way 
into so much of the popular antichristian writing 
of the day, and which appears also in the stock 
joking of the newspapers without any express ir- 
religious purpose, moves my strongest disgust. 
So also the hackneyed wit with which many 
Christians make jokes about grace at meals, say- 
ing their prayers, &:c., excites my repugnance ir- 
resistibly. The solemn seriousness that I love 
sheds its balm upon me in the slow and sweet 
strains of church organs, and in harmonious 
congregational singing; but it is too great a price 
to pay for this soothing enjoyment to commit 
myself to the walls where decorum obliges one 
to stay through the further service of an offensive 
doctrinal liturgy, or of misnamed extemporaneous 
praying in platitudes which have been put to- 
gether with study and pains to tickle the ears of 
the congregation. These things put the solemn 
seriousness to flight ; and, despite an occasional 



Through Rome On. 223 

excellent sermon, the general effect of going to 
church is to make me feel that m j time has been 
wasted. 

There is a beautiful church in Paris, one of 
the beautiful and sacred things which the late 
atrocious Commune passed by in its rage ; where 
I used to listen with closed eyes and restful soul 
to what sounded like angel voices and seraph 
harps, on a still Sunday morning. The nearest 
approach to this effect at home is in the notes of 
the processional hymn chaunted by the surpliced 
boys of one of our high-church choirs. 



Man, teach the religious philosophers, is so 
made that he cannot be satisfied till he has aban- 
doned his thorny position of nescience in regard 
to subjects above nature, and settled in the belief 
of a contriving Deity, who after many struggles 
and failures, at last consummates a divine scheme 
by which a portion of mankind are finally res- 
cued from evil, while the rest are identified with 
it forever and ever. When this comforting be- 
lief is reached, the mind is at rest. No insol- 
vable problem remains to trouble it further; 
and the immeasurable superiority of faith over 
nescience is established beyond all question. 



224 Throiigh Rome On, 



To make morals depend on religion is to con- 
tradict the testimony of all time. The growth 
of morals is the growth of human experience; 
and every advance in morals bears men aw^ay 
from the antecedent religions type. A very pro- 
minent illustration of this fact is afforded by the 
changes in law which the improvement in public 
sentiment has rendered imperative. The old 
laws were framed in the spirit and in reference to 
the teachings of religion, and were consequently 
bad; and they are necessarily altered or abol- 
ished as mankind advance in culture and free- 
dom. In the time of our ancestors men were 
hearty believers in religion ; and so it seemed to 
them right that the law should hang a child for 
stealing a pocket-handkerchief and burn old wo- 
men for witchcraft. We find the spirit of such 
laws in Paley's Moral Philosophy. The emi- 
nent judge Sir Matthew Hale said that he made 
no doubt at all that there were such creatures as 
witches : " for, first, the Scriptures had affirmed 
so much ; secondly, the wisdom of all nations 
had provided laws against such persons, which 
is an argument of their confidence of such a 
crime." Sir Matthew was right in saying that 
the laws were an argument of the confidence of 
mankind in the existence of the crime ; but we 



Through Home On. 225 

now perceive that it was not wisdom, but unwis- 
dom, ignorance, and a fatal reliance on false stand- 
ards, that led to their having such laws. The 
letter of the laws is still respected among ns; 
but such is the growth of public sentiment that 
it is no longer possible to carry out their spirit 
as in the earlier time. Our law-makers, while 
still admitting, as private persons, that it was 
divinely right under the old Jewish law to stone 
a froward child to death, and to execute people 
for witchcraft and for picking up sticks on the 
Sabbath, would shrink with horror from preserv- 
ing such godlike enactments in their codes ; and 
they even presume to charge their Christian 
forefathers with superstition for their lingering 
attachment to the divine model of legislation con- 
tained in the Bible. This happy change — for 
surely the most devoted religionist must allow 
one to call it happy — is an advance in morals, not 
proceeding from religion, which enforced a very 
different lesson when it was in power ; but coming 
to pass in spite of religion, whose word remains 
to contradict it, but whose power in this respect 
is so greatly weakened, that it can only for a 
short time to come hinder moral advances and 
reforms which shall divorce theology and law 
forever. In the meantime, good Christian people, 
answer the question : Is this purging of the law 
a real advance and a thing to rejoice in, or is it 



226 Through Rome On, 

an impious and atheistical decline, to be lamented 
and prayed against ? 



Is it a true instinct that prompts us to prefer 
decency and good repute and the enjoyment of 
life to dirt and misjudgment and the wrecking 
of earthly happiness ? Why do we call ourselves 
Christians, and yet strive for a good name, and 
keep ourselves clean and well-clothed, and take 
care of our health, instead of courting disesteem, 
and being ragged beggars, macerated hermits 
and graveolent saints ? It was a mark of my 
unfitness for the genuine Christian vocation, that 
I could never get over my recoil from St. Hila- 
rion, who went much farther than Dr. Johnson 
in his aversion to clean linen. Such very dirty 
patterns of saintsliip as Anthony and Hilarion 
and Simon the Stylite I could not abide. It was 
very bad in me ; but I constantly felt that no 
supererogation of piety can make up for want of 
soap and water. Physiology and decency con- 
curred to disgust me with monks and hermits. 
Could I reverence in a Christian ascetic what 
repelled me in his Indian rival % 



Tlie craving for sympathy, support, and lead- 
ing, is very strong in some natures; and un- 



Through Rome On. 227 

doubtedly the Cliurcli answers in a great degree 
to this craving. It is nevertheless evident that 
the truth of the Church's doctrine and the obli- 
gation to belong to the Church do not follow 
from the fact just stated ; though a certain rela- 
tive fitness of the Church and its system is there- 
by substantiated. The craving is supplied with- 
out the Church also. It has been felt and 
effectually answered where the Church is un- 
known. It is felt continually where Christianity 
is utterly inoperative ; and is supplied from other 
sources. The comfort of the Real Presence (a 
comfort which I can vouch for) does not prove 
the Real Presence. So the comfort and the 
value of reference to a supposed Divine Being 
do not prove that there is such a being in reality. 
The craving leads to the invocation of saints and 
angels, as well as to prayer to God; and to be- 
lief and trust in the help of angelic spirits as 
well as to belief and trust in God. That Chris- 
tians can do so well without the subordinate 
spirits as Protestants are seen to do, shows how 
largely this habit of religious faith and depend- 
ence is the fruit of education and usage, and 
points to the further emancipation of mankind 
to the extent of discarding all appeals to and reli- 
ance on supernatural assistance, and the substitu- 
tion of known and appreciable natural influences 
in place of the traditional objects of superstition. 



228 Through Borne On. 

The god that a man talks to is his fetich, 
great or small. 

Christian fetichism, though it dies hard, will 
be as glaringly absurd in time as heathen fetich- 
ism is now. 

The moral sentiment, the conscientious prin- 
ciple in man, has gone through many stages of 
development, wearing for a time religious and 
theological and empirical shapes, as the principle 
of science has also done. The former has with 
the spread of intellectual freedom grown into 
ripeness and independence, and gives token of 
the place it is to hold in the new era, where also 
the affections and reverence and geniality of tlie 
mind will have their proper part to play. Al- 
ready the true object of these emotions is felt 
and followed in an increasing degree, and is day 
by day receiving in practice more of its rightful 
recognition. Though so much of the juices of 
human strength and tenderness has been poured 
out in vain and cruel asceticism, and though 
such loads of the heart's most precious offerings 
are still squandered in the service of superstition, 
yet all the time it has been, and now it is more 
and more widely seen to be, Humanity itself 
that is the true refuge and fountain of supply 
for man. When one of our race is without the 
needed help from his kind on earth, it is Hu- 
manity still that he turns to, and only Humanity 



Through Rome On. 229 

that he can believe in or trust. Humanity is 
then for him enthroned in the sky; and only by 
reliance on the human attributes of sympathy, 
compassion, loving-kindness, can he put up the 
prayer of faith to his God. 



According to natural politics (and morals), 
the people are to judge for themselves of the 
right of violent revolution. According to theo- 
logical politics (as the proper result of Revela- 
tion), the Divine order on earth is supreme over 
governments and people alike, and is empowered 
to depose the former and to free the latter 
from the oblig-ation of alleo^iance. The divine 
right of kings not subject to the Church, 
has been the doctrine of some Protestants. It 
was a favourite with James the First of England, 
who had not been able to do much with it while 
he was only James the Sixth of Scotland ; and 
his son and grandson lost their kingdom, the 
former his head also, through inherited attach- 
ment to the doctrine. Protestants in general, 
however, have taken the ground of natural poli- 
tics as above stated; and so have many Catho- 
lics ; and this is practically the principle of all 
enlightened nations at the present day. It is 
inconsistent nevertheless with the theological 



230 Through Borne On. 

premises whicli are still admitted. Politics, as 
a branch of ethics, pertains to the Divine order, 
and to the tribunal of the spiritual judge : so 
that the independence of the secular authority, 
asserted by Galileans and other tepid Christians, 
logically involves denial of the supernaturalist 
principle and corner-stone. As a Catholic, I saw 
that the theological premises justified the Ultra- 
montane claims for the Papacy ; and I accord- 
ingly held and asserted Ultramontanism as the 
only genuine Christian ground. This position 
became more and more painful as the impression 
grew irresistibly and sunk into my mind of the 
mischiefs and wrong that had been wrought, and 
that were necessarily liable to be wrought, by 
Papal interference. I perceived that there was 
manifestly no Divine provision for the just work- 
ing of the theological principle; and thus the 
conclusion became forced that it was not a true 
principle. I still saw that it was a necessary 
part of theology ; and so the further conclusion 
followed that theology itself was not true. I was 
much vexed in my Catholic experience by the 
disingenuous treatment by Catholic writers in the 
English language of two points of the Catholic 
teaching : Exclusive Salvation, and the full force 
and effect of Papal Supremacy. These writers, 
almost without exception, have been so daunted 
by the ineradicable repugnance of the Anglo- 



Through Borne On, 231 

Saxon mind to the genuine Catholic view on the 
two points mentioned, as to gloss over and dis- 
tort the truth in a pitiable manner. Almost, 
but not quite, without exception. A few have 
bravely stood by their religion, as if they be- 
lieved in it above everything else, and gloried in 
its opposition to the corrupt reason and con- 
science of fallen human nature. Cardinal Man- 
ning has spoken out clearly enough at times; 
and our American hero of the faith. Dr. Brown- 
son, was, first and last, a thorough-going uncom- 
promising exponent of genuine Catholicism in 
its most ofiensive aspects. Brownson did not 
hesitate to declare {BrownsorC s Quarterly Re- 
view^ July 1850, p. 328) that " the worst cardi- 
nal that ever lived, while he retains the faith, is 
superior to the best heretic or schismatic that 
ever existed " : and in a letter " from an earnest 
priest " to Dr. Brownson, published in the lat- 
ter's Heviewfor October 1874, the priest writes: 
"I studied in Carlo w, Ireland; where since my 
childhood I heard always that 'no one except 
Catholics would be saved.' So steadfastly do 
the Irish Catholics cling to this opinion, that 
they would not so much as pray God to have 
mercy on a dead Protestant." The earnest 
priest is right : where the great faith of Catho- 
lics has stomach for it, the unadulterated doc- 
trine is what they are fed on. But as I have 



232 Through Rome On. 

dealt somewhat at length already with the topic 
of Exclusive Salvation, that may be dismissed 
here, where something remains to be said con- 
cerning the Papal prerogative. The late Arch- 
bishop Kenrick, generally so sound and luminous 
with his Catholic pen, has not treated this sub- 
ject satisfactorily in his otiierwise admirable 
work on the Primacy. It is in vain for any one 
to rest the Pope's dispensing power on a mere 
consensus of the Catholic nations. The arch- 
bishop does not say downright for himself that 
this was all ; but he seems to invite the reader 
to the conclusion. Doubtless there was such a 
consensus ; but this consensus itself was only a 
part of tlie unity of faith, which did not admit of 
the denial of the Pope's supremacy over the 
temporal as well as the spiritual order ; and in- 
dubitably the Popes themselves claimed the de- 
posing and dispensing powers on the higher 
ground o^Jus divinum, by virtue of their office 
of God's representative, and not on the ground 
of jus humanum, or the political order of the 
Middle Aoes. The sovereio:n Pontiffs did not 
ask any human consent for their acts of this 
kind; but claimed to exercise them by a right 
inherent in their apostolic office, derived, not 
from any king or subjects on earth, but from tlie 
Almighty Sovereign of heaven and earth, who 
had built the Church upon the Papacy, and sub- 



Through Rome On. 233 

jected the whole order of earthly society to the 
authority of the Church. The Church (accord- 
ing to the genuine Christian theorj^) is the divine 
order in this fallen world. It lifts the curse of 
Adam, absolves from or fixes the guilt of actual 
sin, dispenses the streams of supernatural grace, 
defines the obligations of governments and pri- 
vate men according to the law of God, of which 
it is the keeper and interpreter, and enforces 
those obligations, when it sees fit to do so, with 
such means as are in its hands. In order to the 
efficient performance of all its functions, it is 
furnished, as an integral part of its constitution, 
with a central, living, executive Head. This 
Head, the Pope, is supreme over the Church, 
with the bishops under him ; and over civil gov- 
ernments, with the temporal rulers under him. 
Temporal rulers hold their authority, whether 
with their own acknowledgment or not, from 
him. The bishops derive the episcopate from 
him, and as Bishop of Rome he shares it with 
them ; but as Pope he enjoys alone the aposto- 
late, immediately from Christ. Thus the Pope 
is invested with supremacy to rule, as well as 
with infallibility to teach ex cathedra^ in the 
place of Christ, who has the heathen for his 
inheritance^ and the uttermost jp arts of the earth 
for his possession (Ps. ii. 8). So the Pope, as 
alter Christus^ may dispose of the territories of 



234: Through Rome On. 

the earth, as he did when he gave England to 
William the Conqueror, Ireland to Henry the 
Second, the countries of America to the Spanish 
sovereigns, &c. This jurisdiction, it should be 
understood, pertains to his supremacy, and not 
to his infallibility ; so tliat the civil obligations 
of Catholics are not altered, as Mr. Gladstone 
supposes, by the late definition by the Vatican 
Council of what, by the way, is no new doctrine, 
though until the late decree a Catholic might 
speculatively question it without incurring the 
Church's anathema. It is quite clear that the 
Popes have regarded their supremacy over the 
temporal order as having the same divine origin 
as their supremacy over the spiritual order ; and 
have explicitly declared so in repeated instances. 
This fact should be decisive with all who under- 
stand what the Catholic conception of the Papacy 
is. I was not able to entertain any doubt on 
the subject when I was a Catholic ; and I always 
felt then that the Pope's authority over me as a 
citizen was paramount, being superior to that of 
the government of my country, as well as to that 
of my own conscience. How I should have 
acted in the impossible case of a conflict between 
the two parties, the Pope and my civil govern- 
ment, I cannot say. That Catholics in the mass 
are trustworthy citizens and subjects, I am thor- 
oughly satisfied. History shows them to have 



Through Rome On. 235 

been such in past periods when the religious sen- 
timent and spiritual tie were a thousand times 
stronger than now ; and the logic of doctrine, which 
was nearly always weaker than the instinct of 
patriotism, is at its lowest ebb to-day. Men, as 
Sir Thomas Browne says of states, " are not gov- 
erned by ergotisms." The vast body of religion- 
ists, moreover, do not see, and will not see, what 
the logic of their doctrine commits them to. 
And the governments of the United States and 
Great Britain may confidently parody the French 
lady's remark about perdition for the aristocracy, 
and depend upon it that the Pope will think 
twice before damning governments of their qual- 
ity. 

A far greater danger to civil obligations and 
to the just powers and operations of governments 
all over the world than Pope or priest can 
threaten now, lies in the prevalence of secret 
societies. 



In the old times morality was fastened to 
theology wath a padlock. Some bold bad men, 
as they were called, picked the lock and found 
that they could do without it. The Beformation 
produced a key ; but the lock was rusty, and 
hands fumbled with lock and key for a good 



236 Throiigh Rome On. 

while. The unlockiDg is effected however ; and 
not Catholics alone, but many Protestants like- 
wise, declare that if the padlock be taken off 
morality will be undone. Yes, say the Radicals : 
it will be undone^ in the sense that it will be un- 
fastened from theology ; and the sooner the bet- 
ter. Of course the Radicals count for nothing. 
They believe that morality is not derived from 
the Decalogue ; that there was morality, right 
and wrong and all that, before there was any 
Moses. What can you expect from such in- 
fidels ? They say the padlock is no more than 
so much old iron. This is not to be endured. 
We must turn over a new leaf, beginning with 
our proposed amendment to the Constitution, 
making Christianity the established religion, put- 
ting Kadicals, Jews, <fec., upon a lower grade of 
citizenship; tolerating them at first, and biding 
our time to get them under severer law, when 
we shall be strong enough to expand the amend- 
ment so as to make the Christianity it establishes 
properly definite, by expressly recognising be- 
lief in the Trinity and the other fundamental 
tenets of Orthodoxy as part of the law of the 
land, and thus outlawing, or righteously subor- 
dinating, latitudinarians who have the presump- 
tion to call themselves Christians witliout hold- 
ing, anymore than Jews and Radicals themselves, 
those saving doctrines which alone shall be in 



Through Borne On. 237 

harmony with the American Constitution. How 
long after that it will be before one of tlie parties 
of Orthodoxy shall prevail eg as to get itself 
enthroned over the rest in the Constitution, is 
not a pressing question at present. Let us begin 
with the general Christian amendment. Our 
right to that being allowed, our right to more in 
the same direction will not admit of logical de- 
nial. In the meantime, we must sternly confront 
the Kadicals when they demand further seculari- 
sation of existing law. It may not be possible 
to bring about such a glorious recognition of the 
supernatural authority of the Bible as would be 
effected by a re-enactment of the laws against 
witchcraft; but w^e can preserve the precious 
mementoes of established religion in our test- 
books, we can keep up the Sunday laws, we can 
maintain our privileges as untaxed ecclesiastical- 
property-holders. "When Radicals oppose us on 
these points, we can charge them with wishing 
to overthrow the moral law, and continue to refer 
to the Decalogue as the ground of moral obliga- 
tion; impressing upon the public mind that adul- 
tery and murder are of the same character with 
resistance to our dictation about Sunday; and 
that Moses is to be accepted as the authority for 
the natural morality he was born under, and for 
the observance of a day which he never enjoined 
or kept. And if any have the assurance to say 



238 Through Rome On. 

that this is not straightforward honest pleading 
on our side, let them be made to understand, by 
every instrumentality in our power, that the end 
justifies the means; and that what is dishonest 
humanly looked at, may be the highest honesty 
from a divine point of view. 



Through Borne On. 239 



FROM AK EXTENDED CORRESPONDENCE WITH 
AN EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN. 

.... You have been urgent with me, and have 
spoken in plain and severe language: you will 
have no right to complain if I discard needless 
ceremony in my reply. . . . I would assail no one; 
but I will not speak equivocally to any one to 
please him, or to procure favour for myself; nor 
will I yield to unjust assault from any quarter. 
.... If you suppose that I could believe in reli- 
gion and not accept and practise it, you do not 
know me. Not for one hour, not for one mo- 
ment, could I withhold my heart and my open 
allegiance from a system that I believed to be 
divinely given and thereby made obligatory on 
mankind. It w^ould not be a greater misconcep- 
tion to associate me with Calvinism itself, — that 
** superfetation of blasphemy," as Coleridge calls 
it, — against which the protest of my record is 
especially directed, than to associate me with in- 
differentism, with neglect of a high and recog- 
nised duty. I could not believe in a religion and 



240 Through Borne On. 

not practise it. As searclier, as Christian, as 
Catholic, as Freethinker, I have always been 
constitutionally thorough. This is a necessity 
of my nature ; which if you do not know you do 
not know me .... You call upon me to receive 
your opinions with the respect due to a divine 
revelation. I deny that your opinions, or those 
of your school, are any more divine than other 
men's. I deny that you have any more " reve- 
lation " than I have. What you style the Oracle 
of Truth is simply a body of ancient writings, 
the works of human imaginations and human 
hands; selected by men whom you have pre- 
cluded yourself from calling infallible or inspired, 
and, so selected, made sacred to you by associa- 
tion and confidence in your early mentors and 
guides. You take your Bible upon jnst such 
grounds as the Mohammedan takes his Koran 
on : the ground of early education, of long pre- 
possession and association, of the deeply im- 
printed notion that it is a sin to call its divinity 
in question. This last ground effectually cuts 
off any impartial examination and fair conclusion 
in the premises. Inspiration belongs to the super- 
natural order : how can human testimony — one 
man's declaration to another — suffice for its 
attestation ? Without a supernatural witness we 
can know nothing of the supernatural divinity of 
a writing or selection of writings out of the many. 



Through Home On. 241 

You have no supernatural witness. When the 
Beformers, whom you follow in this matter, re- 
jected the infallible Church, they abandoned the 
only plausible pretence of a supernatural witness. 
Thenceforward there remained for them and 
their adherents only human judgment to fall back 
on ; and this, however good in its order, the 
natural, can never transcend that order, so as to 
judge supernaturally of the inspiration, any more 
than of the meaning, of the Bible writings. For 
the great mass of Protestants, there is absolutely 
no authority for the Bible beyond the taken-for- 
granted word of their fallible uncertain teachers ; 
which they neither care nor are able to reinforce 
by investigation for themselves ; and if in your 
case there has been any kind of critical study 
added, it has been with the predetermined issue 
in your mind from first to last, colouring all the 
data, and secured by the conviction that you 
were morally hound to arrive at the fixed intel- 
lectual conclusion that had been taught you. 
And if your study had been thoroughly candid, 
your conclusion could still be only a common 
human conclusion, with no shadow of divinity 
about it. You have no supernatural witness : 
and if the human authority of the Protestant 
elders suffices to prove the Bible, then the human 
authority of the Persian elders, is as good for the 
Zend-Avesta, of the Indian elders for the Yedas, 



242 Through Borne On, 

of the Mohammedan elders for the Koran. You 
have the same right and reason to make flesh 
your arm as they have ; but you have not, any 
more than they, justification for denouncing as 
wicked any one's refusal to worship the arm of 
flesh as Divine. Your synods and doctors and 
Sunday-school teachers are no more divine than 
the corresponding functionaries of the unchristian 
religions ; and to reject the former's opinion 
about the Bible is no more wicked, no more dis- 
obedience to a divine authority, than to reject 
the opinions of the latter about their sacred books. 
.... Your miracles are like the others, only not 
BO well attested as some of the latter. Besides, 
miracles are neither provable themselves nor in 
the nature of proofs of any side whatever. They 
are only the argumentum ad ignorantiam ; and 
on Christian grounds themselves, it is right to 
say, as Archbishop Trench does say ( On the Mir- 
acleSy Amer. ed., p. 33), tha,t " to believe on the 
authority of miracles may commit us to Anti- 
christ instead of Christ.". . . .The interpretation 
of your supposed divine Book must needs be to a 
great extent mere guessing at a hidden meaning; 
and human guesswork cannot with any propriety 
be dignified with the name of divine revelation. 
You revive the fable of the Sphinx. It is truly 
a piece of guesswork that you say the Deity has 
propounded, with destruction waiting on a wrong 



Through Rome On. 243 

Bolution. Would a revealing God have left the 
meaning of his words in such doubt ? Can you 
believe that your side alone is favoured with an 
insight of the Divine intention ? Would a fun- 
damental faith in the Atonement have been left 
to debate, or to the ratiocination of fallible un- 
derstandings ? And if such faith be a matter of 
grace, what becomes of the earnest and good 
men who have failed to seize the right view % 
Can you believe (as the logic of your position 
eeems to require) that they are abandoned to a 
strong delusion^ that they may he damned? 
(II Thess. ii. 11, 12. I heard a famous preacher in 
your brother's church make this application of 
the text, some years ago.) Excuse me for saying, 
as I must, that this varnished Protestant ortho- 
doxy of yours is very ridiculous. The lion's 
skin has no terrors for one who knows the real 
lion. When Protestantism was young, it was 
heterodox : Protestants were then new religion- 
ists, come-outers, like the men you call infidels 
now. Timid souls must have looked from within 
the Church upon the Protestant innovators as 
being at least in great danger of losing their own 
souls, and as threatening the goodness of others 
by upsetting morality, which the Church declared 
to be bound up with her faith, as you think it is 
bound up w^th yours now. It is trying yet to a 
sensitive soul to stand alone, or in a heterodox 



244: Through Home On. 

minority, confronted by a confident claimant of 
exclusive legitimacy and salvation. It was much 
more trying in times that are past ; and the first 
Reformers, especially in handfuls, must have felt 
fearful and abashed. However clear their 
spiritual safety may seem to us now, they must 
have quaked for themselves sometimes, with the 
great towering Christian Orthodoxy of the time 
against them and frowning them down. But note 
with me, that they were not really reprobate, and 
that the spread of Protestantism has not been de- 
structive of morality. Thinking on this, perhaps 
you will by and by open your mind a little wider 
still, and understand that the farther and farther 
extension of Free Thought does not imperil salva- 
tion nor threaten morality any more than the first 
undeveloped Protestantism did, whatever the 
words or fears of disciples of close corporations 
may continue to forebode. You are sure that the 
original Protestants were safe, though outside of 
the Church and solemnly cursed in God's name 
for denying the faith. And you are very sure 
you are safe in your Evangelicahsm. The Uni- 
tarian is as sure he is safe in rejecting your fun- 
damental doctrines. The Turk is as sure in the 
faith of Mohammed as tho Christian in the faith 
of Christ. And I, my friend, am as sure I am 
safe in my rejection of your religion as any one 
can possibly be in his rejection, in life and in 



Through Rome On. 245 

death, of what does not commend itself to hira 
as true. . . .1 have searched my soul, looking for 
possible latent motives influencing the change. 
Tlie result is, I am firmly convinced that I am 
morally as well as intellectually right in my re- 
jection of Catholicism and of Christianity. . . . 
Observe, I do not reject Christianity hastily, or 
from a spirit of opposition. I reject it delibe- 
rately, from my conscience, after long examina- 
tion and experience of it, and with full know- 
ledge of what it is and what it is not. This 
may seem to you an impossible thing : for me it 
is the only possible thing. . . .Would you have 
me go back to Home ? lN"o : you would recom- 
mend to me the half-way house of Evangelical- 
ism. But I am not a half-way man. If the 
road be the true one, I must journey the whole 
way on it, must not leave it till it stops of itself, 
and thereby tells me my destination is reached. 
Besides, Evangelicalism is not safe if your theory 
be true, which hangs salvation on the true faith 
and supernatural oracle. You have no sound 
excuse for being outside of Catholicism which 
will not justify me in being outside of Christian- 
ity. Many good people assure me that Catholi- 
cism is the necessary way of salvation ; and in- 
deed, if the abiding by one's carefully formed 
and conscientious convictions on the subject of 
religion can possibly be damnable, it is plain to 



246 Through Borne On. 

me that your heresy puts you in the same danger 
as is incurred by my unbelief. As you are assured 
of the truth of Revelation and of the sinfulness 
of unbelief, so the Catholic is assured of the 
truth of Catholicism and the sinfulness of reject- 
ing it or remaining outside of its pale. And if 
you can believe in the reprobation of men for 
rejecting Christianity, you should tremble for 
yourself, and not blame nor wonder at the Cath- 
olic when he asserts the reprobation of such as 
reject what is in his view the only Christianity. 
Do you not see, when you look at the case from 
within and from without, that to make historical 
and metaphysical opinions a test of salvation is 
proper to bigots only, and, viewed in relation to 
the law of human nature which renders it im- 
possible for all to think alike in speculative mat- 
ters, is in contradiction to the Right of Private 
Judgment, w^hich you must maintain to justify 
the Reformation ? . . . . But the case here is, I 
cannot believe as you wish. It is as impossible 
to me to accept your religious notions as to ac- 
cept those of the Jew, the Mohammedan, or the 
Buddhist. Thanks for your good wishes, but 
don't sigh for impossibilities. You would think 
it worse than loss of time, if the advocate of a 
foreign religion were to apply himself to the 
task of converting you to his faith. That faith, 
however, is as dear and sacred to him as yours 



Through Borne On, 247 

is to you ; and it seems to liim as natural to be- 
lieve it, and as unjustifiable to reject it, as it 
seems to you natural to believe Christianity, and 
unjustifiable not to believe it. You are an infi- 
del in relation to liis religion, as he is, and as I 
am, in relation to yours. You are not afraid of 
being damned for your infidelity ; and you may 
rely on it, other people's infidelity is no more 
damnable than yours. . . .1 am not alone in re- 
jecting your "revelation." From its first pre- 
sentment to the present hour, it has failed to 
win the acceptance of the vast majority of man- 
kind. . . .Your "revelation" to a small fraction 
of the race, your " salvation " for a much smaller 
fraction still, do not fulfil the conditions you 
have yourself supposed. To infer from a sup- 
posed universal need, a partial, largely-failing 
remedy, is poor reasoning. If mankind were in 
need of revelation, the giving of Christianit}^ to 
a slender minority of mankind would not re- 
spond to the need. But how vain to sujDpose 
that man waits on supernatural intervention ! 
History and experience show that his needs are 
met and his improvement effected, not superna- 
turally, but by natural development. A daily 
increasing knowledge of the physical and moral 
laws of his own and surrounding nature is the 
true saving revelation that he requires and en- 
joys. It is a revelation without mythology ; a 



248 Through Borne On, 

revelation not fixed in stereotyped tradition from 
the ignorant misjudging past ; but one that ex- 
pands with the growing intelligence and higher 
enlightenment of the race it is given to bless. 
No revelation can account for the Universe, or 
nullify the fact of the existence of Evil ; but the 
lesson we are learning better and better as time 
goes on is, that our real problems and duties are 
to be studied and discharged by a faithful follow- 
ing of nature's lights, and not by clinging to old 
fables or relying on any kind of magic. . . .You 
think your doctrine of another life so superior to 
my no-doctrine on the subject ; but your reckon- 
ing is very short-sighted. You should envy, not 
pity, the man who does not share your faith on 
this point. I speak from experience here ; for I 
held your doctrine once, and I know that to hold 
it in earnest, to ponder it, that is, in its applica- 
tion to ourselves and to our fellow-creatures, is 
to wear a crown of thorns on the heart. The 
thought of the future life that was preached to 
me was so full of pain that I could not help a 
feeling of envy towards the people that did not 
hold the doctrine. I never could so lose myself 
for any long time in the vision of heaven as to 
forget the black counterpart which puts out 
heaven's light, and leaves the doctrine a hideous 
nightmare to the soul; and I can scarcely re- 
member a moment of my later Christian think- 



Through Rome On, 249 

ing on tiie subject when it would not have been 
a joyful exchange to me to accept the prospect 
of man's annihilation in place of the woeful eter- 
nity held out by the Christian teaching. And 
are you, can you be, happy in such a belief? I 
do not mean in intervals of ease, when buoyed 
up with a hope of heaven for yourself. I know 
what that is, and I have learned to be ashamed 
of the frequent intervals of pleasure that I thus 
enjoyed. But with me, the pleasure was soon 
succeeded by pain : — how is it with you ? Can 
you take the doctrine into your heart under- 
Btandingly, and feel that it is one to rejoice in 
and wish to be true ? Do not give a hasty an- 
swer at the impulse of religious zeal ; but think 
a little on my question. Dear friend, I know 
that you are too true of heart to forget that the 
" lost " are your brethren as well as the " saved." 
The prospect for yourself, as for any other good 
man, is extremely doubtful if your doctrine be 
true '^ but suppose you are saved, you and some 

1 Who that listens with a believing mind to the gos- 
pel account of salvation but must share the amazement 
of the primitive disciples when it was propounded to 
them, and must join in their shuddering exclamation — 
*' WTio then can be saved?" Remembering that Scripture 
explicitly sets forth that salvation is a natural impossi- 
bility (Matt. xix. 26 ; Mark x. 27), and that only in a 
"few" instances does it come to pass supernaturally 
(Matt. vii. 14; xx. 16); and remembering further what 



250 Through Borne On, 

others ; while millions upon millions of your fel- 
low-m.en are lost — in the peculiarly horrible 
Christian sense of the word lost — would this be 
liappiness ? To stony-hearted, light-minded, or 
intensely selfish men it might ; — but to you f — I 
need not speak of the multitude of the damned: 
if one soul rolled in the hopeless hell you imag- 
ine, there could not without moral mutilation be 
happy saints in heaven. Thus your doctrine de- 
nies Heaven when it asserts Hell; and instead 
of being noble and comforting in its character, is 
unworthy and horrifying beyond measure. I 
cannot look upon you as happy in holding it. 
If you tell me that you are, I reply that I will- 
ingly make over to you all the happiness of such 
a doctrine ; and that I am very, very happy in 
not holding it. That good Christian Albert 
Barnes declared (in his published correspondence 
with Gerrit Smith) that the contemplation of 
mankind and human destiny filled him with 
gloom and discouragement: and truly from his, 
the Orthodox-Christian, point of view, it is most 
gloomy and heartsickening. I have thought on 
this point over and over again. I have pon- 
dered it by death-beds as well as in the light of 

the failure of salvation is understood to imply, we are 
surely justified in holding that Christianity unfolds the 
darkest and most depressing prospect that has ever chilled 
and blighted the heart of man. 



Through Home On, 251 

life. I am sure that the comfort you speak of 
is not to be depended on. Oh the wretched 
coTYifort of believing that one is saved and an- 
other damned ! Deliver me from that, and from 
the absorbing, all-satisfjing contemplation of my 

own salvation ! The case of is one in point, 

but not to your purpose. The tender mercy he 
believes in is very cruel. It saves him, perhaps, 
and one brother. It damns two others of the 
family, and leaves the fate of the rest fearfully 
uncertain. Give me the comfort of not believ- 
ing here. I can never forget that funeral ser- 
mon two years ago. It can hardly have com- 
forted you: me it heartily disgusted .... The 
consolation you speak of in life and in death is 
one of convention and human sympathy. I am 
so far from disputing it, that I have a full con- 
sciousness of it ; but I know that it is not pecu- 
liar to Christianity, nor to the principle of reli- 
gion. The other religions have it as well as 
Christianity ; and it is enjoyed outside of all the 
religions. It is as real in the case of the Jew or 
the Mussulman as in the case of the Christian. 
It no more depends on belief in the Son of God 
than on belief in the Mother of God. It is no 
more divine in one case than in another. A 
clear conscience is more consoling to a healthy 
mind than any religious belief; and calmness at 
death, as during life, is a phenomenon of the 



252 Through Rome On, 

nervous system rather than of either behef or 
conscience. Doubtless it is consoling: and en- 
couraging to be in communion with surrounding 
minds ; and the consolation is greatest when we 
are weakest, and must be inestimably precious 
in the solemn parting hour. The Turk would 
choose to die among Mohammedans, the Chris- 
tian among Christians, the unbeliever among 
sensible kindly people who did not look upon 
him as ready salted for the fire. I have said 
that the consolation is real, and that it is not 
divine (sup ernatur ally divine). It is indeed very 
sweetly human. I do not undervalue it when it 
proceeds from acquiescence in the opinions of a 
present majority, though there is a price which 
I cannot afford to pay for this kind of consola- 
tion. I will not put out the eyes of my under- 
standing and blow selfishness to a white heat to 
enjoy it. As to that poor miserable plea of 
safety^ — I have already pointed out that you are 
no safer than I in that point of view. There is 
no safety for anybody if it be dangerous to re- 
fuse to bow to one who claims that his fold or 
belief is necessary to salvation. There are too 
many contradictory claims of this sort, all equally 
arrogant and equally foolish. But it is un- 
worthy of rational and upright minds to argue 
in a strain which rates truth and untruth to- 
gether as commodities, and invites to the choice 



Through Rome On. 253 

of one or the other as a matter of expediency or 
personal advantage. Prove jour positions, and 
I must believe in them, whether I like it or not. 
To threaten me with Divine condemnation for 
what is not within the control of mj will, and 
what it were a base exercise of will to control in 
that way if I could ; — to threaten Heaven's 
wrath for not believing what seems to me false, 
is an extravagance that you ought to open your 
eyes to without further delay. 

. . . .Man might, it is conceivable, be inspired 
with a revelation above reason ; but nothing ia 
the shape of human statements is above reason, 
or too sacred for its tests. The creeds and com- 
mentaries of the religious world are an open 
book to be read and canvassed ; not a divinity 
too high to be confronted, but before whose foot- 
stool we must kneel and tremble and believe .... 

.... I cannot submit to have a man-made 
system imposed upon me as Divine. I see the 
naturalness of the rise and progress of Chris- 
tianity in the world. I can trace the gradual 
development of this religion in hierarchy and 
doctrine, as I can the tribal invasions, the fusion 
of nations, the growth of feudalism, and succeed- 
ing events in modern history. I see how the 
doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation were 
with repeated touchings fashioned and stamped 
by theologians and councils in the first four cen- 



254: Through Home On. 

turies ; how the Atonement was moulded by ac- 
cepted notions of Boman law; and how the Pope 
became head of the Church through the worldly 
importance of his see, as the worldly importance 
of New York gets the first American Cardinal. 
I see how the Reformers of the sixteenth century 
(under the laws of human nature still, as the 
Apostles and their primitive Christianity were) 
made a "new departure" for themselves, and 
got out an improved gospel which later Protest- 
antism has still further amended and modernised. 
Seeing these things, and knowing Christianity 
from within as well as from without, having an. 
intimate personal experience of w^hat it is, as well 
as of how it seems to the believer, I am under a 
sacred obligation, while honouring its heroes and 
acknowledging all the merits that attach to it, 
to protest against the error of separating it from 
all other human evolutions and calling it super- 
natural, when it is as evidently natural as any- 
thing else in history or life. I am under a sacred 
obligation, I say, to protest against this error of 
worshipping a man-made system as divine, and 
to refuse to be a yoke-fellow with you in subor- 
dinating my conscience to the rule of any of its 
conflicting authorities. I satisfied myself on this 
subject long ago, and gave up the church platform 
then forever. And this theological creed, this 
ecclesiastical faith which men are disputing over 



Through Rome On. 255 

yet ; winch j^ou hold in one shape and others in 
other shapes ; which is so manifestly the product 
of men's varying judgments and fancies, instead 
of being the unspotted heavenly revelation which 
each one in his own sense proclaims it to he; — 
this you would have me return to and call divine ! 
No, my friend. . The truth which I have gained 
is my most precious possession. I will hold it 
fast, and will not let it go. I prize it because it 
is truth, and so above all price ; and because I 
feel the great excellence and comfort of it, now 
that through much travail of heart and mind I 
have made it my own. I have held it many 
years, have faced life and death with it, and 
never found it fail. To bid me give it up for a 
church creed which is repulsive to me, which I 
made trial of long ago, and proved to be false, 
cruel, and impossible of belief, is as if you should 
ask me to put out my eyes and become an opium- 
eater, to avoid seeing things as they are, and to 
be fed on the visions of a distempered imagina- 
tion. 



.... Your last letter is very gratifying. It is 
more kindly and argumentative than anything I 
have had from you before. Had you spoken in 
that strain formerly, my replies could hardly 
have been just what they were. But it is all 



256- Through Borne On. 

the better, perhaps, that we have been moved to 
utter ourselves with great plainness on both 
sides. The " soft answer " is invaluable against 
some kinds of wrath ; but it will not do on all 
occasions. . . .1 have much sympathy with what 
you say about the spirit of prayer, the aspirations 
after holiness, the sentiment of dependence and 
gratitude, and the necessity of going out of our- 
selves to reach the great peace and content of 
the soul. The feeliDgs which you express on these 
topics, and which wake their proper response 
in me, are above and beyond all polemics, and 
draw men together everywhere when conscience 
is stirred and pride of opinion is at rest. To as- 
sociate the best that we know with what is above 
all knowledge is natural to the mind as soon as 
the first point of civilisation is attained ; and here- 
in lies the most endurinoj element of the streno^th 
of religion, as well as the excellence and beauty 
that belong to it. I admit the partial correct- 
ness of the sentiment quoted by jou from the 
author of Ecce Homo. It struck me forcibly 
upon my first reading of the admirable paper in 
which it occurs. Undoubtedly the morality of 
Christians is closely connected with their belief 
in the Christian religion ; and this consideration 
renders it a peculiarly delicate and ungracious 
office here to animadvert on the falsities and 
mischiefs of Christianity. It is nevertheless a 



Through Borne On. 257 

duty to do this from time to time; and, due re- 
gard being had to fitness of occasion and method, 
the duty is as binding as any other on minds 
penetrated with a sense of the evils mentioned. 
.... I cannot think that in any fair and com- 
plete view of the matter the True is to give way 
to the False for fear of consequences. Perhaps 
the difference in our impressions arises from a 
difference in the scope of contemplation of the 
subject from the two sides. You look only at 
immediate results, and, as I think, make a mis- 
take about them. I have accustomed myself to 
look far, far beyond, and to study consequences 
in their development. . . .Is it possible that you 
do not discern the change in the relations of 
theology and public sentiment ?. . . .Dr. Christ- 
lieb writes, in his Modern Doubt and Christian 
Belief, on " The Present Breach between Cul- 
ture and Christianity." Yes the " breach " cer- 
tainly exists, though you have called it in ques- 
tion. Why, this " breach," this " confl.ict," is pre- 
cisely the problem which earnest Cliristians who 
think as well as believe are struggling, as such 
men never struggled before, to solve so as to save 
their cherished faith from destruction. You can 
not put aside with a word of contempt the em- 
blazoned characteristic of the age. It is not low 
and corrupt men, it is not eccentric or superficial 
men, it is not sco£fers, that you have to meet 



258 Through Borne On. 

as the opponents of supernatural religion in our 
day ; but men whom you will have to respect when 
you know them, and whom meanwhile you must 
not discredit yourself and your cause bj" misjudg- 
ing, or by relying on slighting or opprobrious 
words to put them down. . . . You cannot sup- 
pose that I did not resort to the means and 
canvass the considerations you now bring for- 
ward. Of course I did so before settling in 
and avowing my present position. In speaking 
to the public, indeed, I have chiefly had re- 
gard to the intellectual part of my struggle, and 
have dwelt upon the aspects of the argument 
as they were gradually unfolded to me in the 
successive stages of the experience I record. 
Tlie distinctively spiritual part of this same ex- 
perience is both too delicate and too sacred to be 
treated in description at any length. At any 
rate, this is my feeling on the subject ; and as 
the argument is full of importance, I have tried 
to state that clearly and let the case rest there. 
Even with you, hitherto, I have not been induced 
to depart from this method ; and from your last 
communication there are remaining points of in- 
tellectual discussion between us which ought, it 
seems to me, to be attended to before any attempt 
at spiritual analysis can be in place. I will say 
to you at once, that I have made trial of the plan 
you esteem so highly. It is the plan of Pascal 



Through Rome On. 259 

and Montalembert among Catholics and their 
congeners, and, to take a modern instance that 
will be familiar to yon, of Mr. Henry Rogers 
among Evangelical Christians. It is genuinely 
Christian, is acted on by multitudes, and is, I 
am sure, effective in a great proportion of cases. 
You would not recommend the masses and holy 
water, as Pascal does ; but you would advise the 
troubled soul to keep on saying it believed and 
praying to the Lord to help its unbelief. This 
is in principle Pascal's plan ; and the stupidity 
and concomitant faith do often ensue from it. 
Now I tried this plan of yours, with the advan- 
tage of Pascal's ramification ( — and let me tell 
you, the masses and holy water are real helps, 
and strong ones too ; though, having no experi- 
ence of them, you may not believe it); and in 
my case it failed as completely as I doubt not it 
has succeeded in many others. . . .1 have spoken 
to you of the cause of the decline of religious 
persecution. I must now remind you that you 
ought to believe in witchcraft. I know that you 
cannot ; but you are all the worse Christian, 
though of course all the better man, for the im- 
possibility. You ought to say that you believe, 
and pray to the Lord to help your unbelief; for 
as John Wesley earnestly declared, to give up 
witchcraft is to give up the Bible. Blackstone 
finds the laws for the punishment of witches de- 



260 Through Borne On, 

rived from the Bible. You do not believe in 
witchcraft. But the Bible- writers believed in it; 
the Bible pages take its truth for granted, and 
set forth what you have bound yourself to call 
divine ordinances for its punishment. Our an- 
cestors, who were thorough-going believers in 
the plenary inspiration of the Bible, believed of 
course in witchcraft, and made and executed 
bloody laws for its suppression. We call those 
laws relics of superstition and barbarism, and 
pity the witches. But if our religiosity and faith 
in the Bible were not much weakened, we could 
not do this, but we should have to retain the 
cruel laws and execute them as bloodily as ever; 
for the superstition and barbarism of which they 
were indeed relics were part and parcel of the 
Jewish Law, which Christianity declares to have 
been divine, and the precept of which was. Thou 
shalt not suffer a witch to live. You say that 
the word may be translated poisoner instead of 
witch. Suppose it may : it will hardly do for 
you to save the credit of the Bible by telling 
people whom you hold bound to receive it as in- 
fallible and divine that it contains wrong words 
instead of right ones ; but let that pass. You 
are fully aware that the question does not turn 
upon the passage in Exodus ; but that both the 
Old Testament and the New assume as a matter 
of course the reality of such things as witchcraft, 



Through Rome On. 261 

sorcery, and diabolical possession ; and you must 
be supposed to agree with the Presbyterian doc- 
tor of divinity here wlio said in his pulpit a few 
days ago, as the newspaper informs me, tliat 
" God established himself as a ruler over Israel, 
and as such, furnished a model government for 
all after times." You see that our " after times " 
have departed from the " model " of the Scrip- 
tural past. Our godless legislation has repealed 
the laws against witchcraft. You ought to grieve 
for this ; but, backslider that you are, you don't 
grieve : you are as sure as I am that the repeal 
and the change in public sentiment that deter- 
mined it are not a departure in the wrong direc- 
tion ; but are a growth, an advance, a thing to 
be glad of without any shadow of doubt. I do 
not see how you can turn your mind fairly on 
the subject without further perceiving that the 
education and elevation of the pubHc conscience 
in this matter were retarded by the stringent be- 
lief in Bible-inspiration ; and that it is in conse- 
quence of a decline of the theological spirit and 
a cooling of people's faith in the supernaturalness 
of the old teachings, that we are able to make 
the advance. Judged by this fruit, it is plain 
that the giving up of the doctrine of inspiration 
is a forward step and a blessing to the race. . . . 
Look again at your position in regard to Sunday. 
You have avowed as a settled principle, that no 



262 Through Borne On. 

ordinance can be rightfully insisted on as of di- 
vine obligation unless the obligation be proved 
from the Bible. Now you know quite well that 
there is no command in the Bible to keep Sun- 
day ; and that the statement in vogue among 
Protestants that the obligation of the Jewish 
Sabbath relating to a different day was trans- 
ferred to Sunday is unsupported by a single text 
from beginning to end of the Scriptures. Yet 
in the face of this significant fact, which brands 
the practice itself with inconsistency, you loudly 
insist upon its Scriptural obligation, and de- 
nounce as wicked the non-observance of it by 
persons who refuse to follow your sectarian 
fashion. You speak of it as of the highest im- 
portance. I do not ask how your Sunday-school 
scholars can be made to believe, but I ask how 
you yourself can possibly believe, tliat an institu- 
tion so binding and so important as you say this 
is, can have been left without a clear setting- 
forth and inculcation in the Bible, taking that to 
be the only Christian rule of faith. The Sab- 
bath is expressly declared to be a sign between 
the Lord and the children of Israel forever 
(Ex. xxxi. 17). There is certainly no hint in the 
Old Testament of a change in the Sabbath Day; 
and any Jew who should have undertaken to 
keep Sunday instead of Saturday for the Sabbath 
would have incuj-red condemnation under the 



Through Rome On. 263 

Old-Testament law, and in its palmj days would 
have been put to death. In the New Testament 
there is no more mention than in the Old of a 
change from the seventh day to the first. We 
read of the disciples assembling for worship on 
the first day, as we know they did on other days. 
(See Mosheim and other ecclesiastical historians.) 
Christ declares that on the twin commandments 
of love to God and to man " hang all the law 
and the prophets "; and when he epitomises the 
commandments for the young rich man (Matt, 
xix. 18, 19), he says not a word of the Sabbath. 
The Sermon on the Mount, generally appealed 
to as the perfection of Christianity, makes no 
reference to any holy day. The meeting of the 
Apostles and elders at Jerusalem, recorded in the 
fifteenth chapter of Acts, expressly convened to 
settle the obligations of Christians and their re- 
lations to the Jewish Law, the very occasion, it 
must be admitted, when such an obligation as 
that of the Sabbath would have been declared if 
it had existed as a part of the Christian order, is 
so far from recognising such a thing that it does 
not mention either Sabbath or Sunday, but 
plainly sets aside the earlier dispensation as no 
longer authoritative, in the words : " For it 
seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay 
upon you no greater burden than these necessary 
things ; that ye abstain from meats offered to 



264 Through Rome On. 

idols," &c. ; the Sabbath, under any shape, not 
being among the " necessary things", or things 
inculcated at all by the Apostles, though later 
puritanism has darkened their counsel with such 
effect that you are now insisting on the church 
holy day as divine. Nowhere do we find the 
IN'ew-Testament writers teaching the holiness of 
any particular day, or specifying Sabbath-break- 
ing among the sins to be avoided by their dis- 
ciples. This fact is clearly not reconcilable with 
the scripturalness and binding character claimed 
for the festival among Bible Christians. You 
have read Keander, and you know the testimony 
of this learned and careful Christian authority, 
that "the celebration of Sunday, was always, 
like that of every festival, a human institution : 
far was it from the Apostles to treat it as a Di- 
vine command; far from them, and from the first 
apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sab- 
bath to Sunday." Indeed, your reading must 
supply testimonies of this kind in abundance ; 
and you have to face the fact, that the Evangeli- 
cal notion on this subject (which carried out 
would, according to the warning in Gal. v. 3, 
make you " a debtor to the whole law ") is not 
only against Apostolic preaching and practice, 
but is to this day not generally Christian, but 
only of British and North- American prevalence 
It is clear enough that Sunday was from the first 



Through Borne On. 265 

an entirely distinct day from the Sabbath. 
Many of the early Jewish Christians, unwilling 
to break with their old habit, kept both days ; 
showing that the obligation of one had not been 
transferred to the other. Sunday was not asso- 
ciated by the primitive disciples with Moses and 
Sinai, but was reverenced by them as the day of 
their Lord's resurrection; and only in much 
later times did it come to be popularly miscalled 
"the Sabbath," when sectaries had wrested a 
scriptural name for the weekly holiday, to make 
it a rallying point of opposition to the numerous 
festivals of the Church. The first Christians 
" rejoiced for the consolation " of their release 
from the yoke of the ceremonial observances of 
which the Sabbath was a part; but you Ameri- 
can and British Protestants '' tempt God", in the 
Apostle's language (Acts xv. 10), by renewing 
the yoke which the fathers found too hard to be 
borne. As if the tyrannical Sabbatarianism of 
later times had been anticipated by the ]^ew- 
Testament authorities, from whom you have 
turned away to follow the Puritan innovation, 
we 'find in Rom. xiv. 4, 5, and Col. ii. 16, 
the most explicit condemnation and warning 
of it. 

You know, my dear , that the Bible no 

more commands the observance of Sunday than 
of All Saints' or of Christmas. 



266 Through Rome On. 

. . . .The descent of man is a question of sci- 
ence ; and if you talk about the intrinsic excel- 
lence of one or another view on the subject, it is 
manifestly better to believe with the leaders of 
scientific thought that man has risen, than to be- 
lieve with the theologians, on their own poor and 
oft-refuted word, that he has fallen. 

.... Darwinism, you think, supposes an un- 
worthy origin for man in deriving him through 
an evolution of continually progressive forms; 
but you do not hesitate to derive all post-adamite 
humanity from a pattern of physical degeneracy 
and spiritual foulness wrought by the Devil. By 
how much is sinful generation nobler and better 
than sinless development ? You are not shocked 
at the thought of springing from the dust, but 
are horrified to be the regular sequel of higher 
and higher grades of animal progression. But 
the contemplation of Nature's orderly unfoldings 
in the ascending scale should surely have an ele- 
vating rather than a depressing effect upon the 
mind. I am for my part penetrated with pro- 
foundest admiration and awe in view of the ma- 
jestic law of Evolution, which in the ripeness of 
knowledge and reflection supersedes the " school- 
boy's tale " of artful contrivance by which theo- 
logy pretends to explain the universe. Christian- 
ity does not explain it any more than Free 
Thought; and does not go so far as Free Thought 



Through Rome On. 267 

. f 

in increasing such rational conceptions of it as 

our limited faculties are capable of attaining. 
The Christian account " explains " the universe 
in the same way as the old account of the earth's 
resting on an elephant, or a tortoise, " explains" 
that matter : by assuming, that is, a string of 
arbitrary propositions, utterly unverifiable and 
full of intrinsic difficulties. If freethinkers 
would set up a scaffolding of theory, and speak 
from it in the manner of Christian dogmatism, 
they might in this way furnish an explanation of 
the universe that would be at least as authorita- 
tive and deserving the name as that which Chris- 
tians boast of supplying. But it is better to be 
honest, and not to attempt any deceit on our- 
selves or others by pretending to offer an explan- 
ation where by the nature of the case none is or 
can be possible. To fret over the impossibility 
is like a child's crying for the moon. You un- 
derstand now, I hope, that I do not reject your 
view because of the ultimate incomprehensibleness 
of what it proposes. I have given other reasons 
for my rejection, this one of them being quite 
sufficient in itself: that the view is not sustained 
by evidence, but grows weaker and weaker un- 
der each succeeding test. As long as this is the 
case, incomprehensibility is neither here nor 
there. If I am not to reject a thing because it 
is incomprehensible, neither am I to believe it 



.268 Through Rome On. 

because it is incomprehensible. The want of 
omniscience or infallibility is not a peculiar de- 
fect of mine, but a universal human imperfection. 
The " men of old " whose dictum you deem it 
sin to question, were no more masters of the in- 
comprehensible than you or I. You say in one 
place : — " It is vain to try to answer such ques- 
tions." Yery true. I do not complain of your 
not answering such questions. I complain rather 
that you will insist on answering them, and in 
such a manner. Modestly put, it is as a proba- 
bility that you recommend your doctrine. But 
it is not a probability, greater or less. There is 
no probability that I can see about the doctrine 
you propose. It is altogether and in the highest 
degree improbable. It is but a skin-deep refine- 
ment of the older heathen mythology, whose 
fantastic unreality is so clear to us both ; and 
your kingdom of Satan is worse than anything 
in the religion of the Greeks and Romans. The 
"testimony of the rocks" is in unceasing contra- 
diction to the most carefully revised edition of 
the Church's tale of creation ; and still more em- 
phatic is the contradiction of reason and con- 
science in this day of light to the theosophic 
metaphysics that accompany the tale. Such 
things expose and doom the tradition of which 
they form a part .... When you set up a 
"scheme" of supernatural operations, and urge 



Through Borne On, 269 

it upon grounds of analogy and with other argu- 
ments addressed to the natural reason, you ac- 
knowledge the competency of reason to deal 
with the subject in this point of view, not as a 
pupil, but as a judge. Looking at it so, I ask 
you, would Absolute Goodness create with ac- 
tive poison-working elements for any end ? . . . . 
Was God under compulsion to create man so ? 
No : he was free, you say, to create or not to 
create ; but man could not have been made 
otherwise compatibly with free will in the crea- 
ture. Then it would seem creation should not 
have taken place, or free will should have been 
left out of the plan rather than evil accepted for 
its sake. What necessary Moloch is this Free 
"^ill, that is higher than goodness, better than 
happiness, and so mysteriously precious that evil 
must be adopted as a means to secure it, and 
goodness and happiness offered a divine sacrifice 
to it ? This known world of ours so abounds in 
moral foulness, as well as in physical suffering 
of manifestly impeccable beings, such as little 
infants and irrational animals, that it negatives 
from the first your anthropomorphic theory of 
Creation and Providence ; which is an apotheo- 
sis of human imperfection. Our reason cannot 
fathom the infinite Order of which we are a part ; 
but surely, we are not therefore to lend our im- 
aginations CO monstrous hypotheses on the sub- 



270 Through Rome On. 

ject .... Present wrong righted hereafter f 
Righted by whom ? Heparation is the act of 
an erring or imperfect being ; an erring being 
who has done wrong, or an imperfect being who 
could not prevent it. The^ providence of an 
absolutely perfect Being w^ould admit nothing 
that had to be atoned for or repaired at any 
point, present or future. That wrong once was 
must remain a fact for all eternity. E-eparation 
may console the wronged ; but it cannot undo 
the fact or change the nature of wrong itself, 
and so can be no vindication of the ruling Will 
you make the First Cause of all things. What 
is time but man's measure of a span of eternity ? 
If God's intelligent plan of His universe embraced 
injustice for one moment of time, He would be 
an unjust God as really as if He made injustice 
the rule of eternity .... To consider God as sub- 
jected to the exigencies of a purpose, is not to 
glorify Him, but the contrary ; and you violate 
your own conception of God when you say that 
He was so needy that He had to take in evil 
(no matter how partial) as a part of His plan. 
You really do not rise above humanity in your 
religious ideas. Your God is a magnified man, 
with goodness for his attribute, yet doing equiv- 
ocal acts, and struggling with evil, which, in the 
shape of sin and suffering, he is never to destroy; 
for your Hell is as everlasting as your Heaven. 



Through Borne On, 271 

Your Devil likewise is a magnified man, with 
malignity for his attribute, and enjoying an inde- 
finite lease of power and preternatural means of 
carrying out his wicked designs. Your melan- 
choly compromise of " atonement " and " salva- 
tion" is analogous to a bankruptcy act which 
favours a pitiful per cent out of a race of impe- 
cunious debtors. It is throughout a dream of 
distorted human relations. You apply the terms 
Perfect and Almighty to a conception of a mo- 
bile Being, moved by, as well as operating on, 
man ; the latter's will being free from origination 
or control by his Maker ; the Creator waiting 
on the yet- unborn volitions of His creature. 
This Deity is further a great Schemer, wrapped 
up in a plan which He pursues at all hazards 
and cost to mankind; embracing the before- 
described libertinage, with consequent difficult 
salvation of a part of the race and ready damna- 
tion of the rest. He is All-benevolent, All-wise, 
All-powerful, you say; and He is the Author 
and Providential Ruler of a present world 
abounding in physical and moral evil, and the 
Monarch of a future world where sin and misery 
are to be as eternal as sanctity and happiness. 
Forgive me if I am not able to believe these 
things, nor to discover in them any approach to 
a happy solution of the Mystery of the Universe. 
Forgive me if I cannot call this gospel of yours 



272 Through Rome On, 

a revelation of glad tidings; if I cannot admit 
its right to defy reason and retreat from argu- 
ment with the cry of " a divine mystery." He- 
member all the time that I do not impugn the 
actual order of the Universe, but only men's the- 
ory concerning it ; which is a very different 
thing. I can and do bow in the presence of the 
Incomprehensible ; but it is another thing to pay 
this homage to a definite conception of men's 
minds on the subject, however hoary a tradition 
it may be, however sanctioned by the faith of 
multitudes and the authority of ecclesiastical 
bodies. These claims the other religions have 
as well as yours; and you do not allow them the 
shelter of " divine mystery," but judge them by 
reason and condemn them without appeal. Kea- 
Bon properly deals with logical statements; and 
you have invited it to do so in this case. The 
result is, that I abide in the conviction reached 
by me so far back, and prefer to keep with the 
increasing company of the wise and prudent, 
from whom you think the most precious pearls 
of truth are hid. Let me have my choice. And 
if it must continue to seem to you that this mat- 
ter of Christianity is indeed so exceptional that 
in it alone the swallow of babes and suckhngs is 
to be preferred as a gauge of truth, have your 
choice; but let us love each other still. Obedi- 
ence to conscience begets peace and satisfaction. 



Through Rome On, 273 

This is true of you, of me, and of all men be- 
sides. You are bound to be a Christian, and I 
am bound not to be one ; and neither of us can 
violate his conscience and be blessed. 



274: Through Rome On, 



FROM A LETTER TO A LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. 

.... I am bound to testify to the excellence and 
brightness of the " ITew Faith " ; which many 
who are too clearsighted and just to call it wicked 
still habitually describe as dark and unwhole- 
some. They do not know it who call it so. 
. . . .Happily, you agree with me as to the fal- 
lacy of terrifying people into good lives by ap- 
peals to their imaginations in relation to " the 
other world." Whatever temporary effect may 
be produced in particular cases by a demonstra- 
tion of this kind upon the nerves, no real virtue 
of character can proceed from it ; and apart from 
the low morality of inculcating superstition for 
any end, the practical mischiefs of the resort we 
are looking at are too clear to both of us to need 
any discussion. The backward natures you speak 
of are matched with the backward morality of 
the theological teaching. If the " scheme of sal- 
vation " be in any of its elements a real help to 
them, they lose nothing by the advance of others 



Through Rome On. 275 

to a higlier ground. The 'New Faith is not for 
them. They will not, cannot, have it ; and so 
they cannot, in any point of view, suffer from its 
not invoking their cupidity and fears in regard 
to another life .... To give the name of revela- 
tion to the cryptology which Christians have 
been wrangling over these hundreds of years, is 
to abuse language and mislead thought on the 
subject. You should not blame me for judging 
Christianity as I judge other things. My dear 
friend, there can never be any fair reasoning or 
just conclusions on the subject till this method 
is accepted as the right way of dealing with it. 
Christianity is not that vague, intangible, spirit- 
ual essence which its advocates claim that it is 
to save it from reproach. It is an historical fact, 
embodied in visible institutions, performing re- 
sponsible acts, having a record and annals which 
cannot be evaded, and which it is not fair to re- 
fuse to face. This is where I am obliged to make 
a point against its pleaders. They accept and 
proclaim all that is good in its history, and claim 
credit for it on that account ; and they deny or 
explain away the bad part, though that is just as 
indubitable, and equally characteristic of the sys- 
tem. Every other system than their own reli- 
gion they take as a whole and judge as a whole; 
but only a part of Christianity is allowed to be 
Christian : the other part is shuffled off upon hu- 



276 Through Rome On. 

man nature, and Christianity exonerated from its 
proper responsibility for it. In this way, any 
other system may as well as Christianity be 
clothed with a snowy righteousness and made out 
to be "without spot or wrinkle or any such 
thing"; but Christians stoutly refuse to allow such 
pleading in favour of any other system than their 
own. They loudly reproach other religions with 
the evils that history shows those religions to 
have produced; but the evils — the crimes and 
horrors — which the same immortal witness places 
to the account of Christianity, they set aside as 
of no effect to prove what they would prove in 
any other case. I was not able to follow this 
crooked course ; and so I could not be a Chris- 
tian. . . .Your improved Christianity is not Chris- 
tianity proper. It is no doubt a phase, and an 
important phase, to be considered before the end 
of the argument is reached ; and you will see 
that I shall consider it : but Christianity is a great 
historical fact, which cannot be summed up in 
any of its modern dilutions. "What should you 
think of one who chose for his theme Medicine, 
and then went on to resolve it, in its "method," 
and "secret," and "sweet reasonableness," into — 
Homoeopathy ? Christianity must be weighed 
in a fair balance, as other systems are. We 
judge them by their fruits. We do not place 
their bad fruits to the account of something 



Through Rome On. 277 

else, while counting their good fruits as a testi- 
mony in their favour : neither are we to do this 
in regard to Christianity. The lubrication of it 
by Liberal as well as by Orthodox Christian advo- 
cates, with a view to its slipping out of the grasp of 
fair examination, will not do. But you and I shall 
hardly be far apart at last, in this aspect of the 
case ; for under your triturating interpretations 
Christianity is so surely melting out of its his- 
torical integuments as to be liker and liker to 
that pure naturalism on which I used to rally 
our noble-hearted friend the late Gerrit Smith, 
and tell him that his patent " Extract " would 
suit me nearly as well as the strong German 
" Essence " of Ludwig Feuerbach. 

.... Of all the half-dozen lives of Jesus with 
which I am acquainted, considered as biographies, 
the one by Dr. Furness pleases me most. Cer- 
tainly Strauss's work is unapproachably the great- 
est of them all; but it is as a critique of the 
gospels and of supernaturalism that it takes this 
rank : it is no biography. Renan is acute, elo- 
quent, entertaining ; but he is more of the dan- 
cer than of the marcher or the explorer, and ex- 
hausts himself, it seems to me, in breaking flies 
upon the wheel, without bringing to light any 
facts that we want to get hold of. There are 
few of his class of rhetoricians that I can rise 
from without an unpleasant sense of having been 



278 Through Borne On, 

fed upon froth. E-enan's Yie will not, in my esti- 
mation, bear comparison with either the Leben 
by Strauss or the " English Life " furnished us by 
Mr. Thomas Scott : and as I should send one 
interested in English literature to Chambers' 
Encyclopaedia in preference to the elaborate 
work of M. Taine, so should I recommend Dr. 
Eurness's little book as more helpful reading on 
its subject than the volumes of the clever French- 
man who has electrotyped primitive Christianity. 
But none of the life-writers help us to know Jesus, 
I think. There can be no real biography of a 
being who has been worshipped as a god for 
hundreds of years, and who, while his reality 
continues to be insisted on, will retain his god- 
ship still. You Liberal Christians can make as 
liberal assumptions as the Orthodox themselves, 
when your affectionate purpose requires it ; and 
you with your hyper-dulia, as really worship as 
a god him whom Scripture puts " a little lower 
than the angels," as the Orthodox with their 
latria, who denounce you for not going to their 
length of worshipping him as the God. ^o 
trustworthy biography can be written of a sup- 
posed divine being, concerning whose mortal 
career no sure data remain to us. There is 
nothing but the gospels to go to for Jesus's life ; 
and they, of unknown origin, teeming with in- 
credible stories, and disclosing the plainest evi- 



Through Rome On, 279 

dences of tlie ignorance, disagreement, and un- 
certainty of their writers, are indeed a lucus a 
non lucendo, the shadows of which only the par- 
blind vision of a predetermined faith can mis- 
take for light and clearness. A biography 
culled from the canon is as historically valuable 
as a miniature copied from Yeronica's handker- 
chief. I have no doubt that the very first Chris- 
tians were, as you say, unitarians ; but the grad- 
ual deification of Christ began very early, though 
it took more than three hundred years to elab- 
orate the doctrine into its Nicene and post-Nicene 
proportions. I think we may find the seed of 
the modern tenet even in the genuine epistles of 
Paul ; though the great Apostle was neither ho- 
moousian nor homoiousian, and was in no danger 
himself of confounding the one God and the one 
Lord whom he so distinctively indicates. As the 
Catholics used to say that Erasmus laid the egg 
and Luther hatched it, so we may say that Paul 
and his age broke ground for later and unapos- 
tolic Christianity to build on. There is a genesis 
of doctrines as well as of worlds. Greek thought, 
impregnating the new offshoot of Judaism, pro- 
duced the Trinity, as it had before produced the 
gods of Olympus. Arius was a refiner and sub- 
tiliser after the Greek fashion no less than Atlia- 
nasius. The one God of Israel (also a growth, 
to be traced in the Old Testament) could not 



280 Through Borne On. 

satisfy the former any more than the latter ; and 
three centm-ies of Christian speculation had so 
wrought upon the primitive unitarianism that it 
was no party at all when Constantine assembled 
his theologians at E'ice. It was scarcely a hard 
thing then, though it might bo an impossible 
thing now, to bind men to the worship of one 
special individual son of man as their God. At 
Constantinople, at Ephesus, at Chalcedon, nail 
after nail was driven home and the doctrine 
firmly fastened on the Church. There was a 
readiness then for such results that we can but 
faintly conceive of now. When the Council of 
Ephesus secured to Mary her title of Theotokos, 
"Mother of God," the streets rang with popular 
rejoicings. We can hardly enter into the tem- 
per of those times and of that Ephesian multi- 
tude, or we should wonder less at the develop- 
ments of Christian dogma. The beginning was 
easy and the progress sure. Original Christian- 
ity grew into the religion of the Middle Ages, 
when faith and miracle abounded still, and the 
corporeal descent of Deity was a daily event. 
That the Christian was maldno: an exchano-e of 
worlds, giving up this world and the natural life 
thereof as the price demanded for another world 
and the supernatural life belonging to it, was the 
accepted view. Poverty and pain were blessed 
states ; and hence, to dread and avoid poverty 



Through Home On. 281 

and pain was irreligious ; to labour against them, 
except in temporary works of mercy done for 
God's sake, not Tnan's, was to fly in the face of 
Heaven. The existing order, with its inequali- 
ties, its Bqualidity, oppression, and sorrowful 
conditions of all kinds, was to be permanent, 
was the abiding order for this world. Men, as 
their Christian duty, were to be contented with 
it for the dispensation of time, and to look for 
improvement not to reforms here, but to deliver- 
ance by death, which was the passage to a su- 
pernatural existence. This was the old and gen- 
uine Christian belief; and the festering ills of 
the libelled world went on in sacred hopelessness 
while it flourished. But the Dark Ages and the 
genuine Christian belief that suited them had to 
pass away. Original Christianity was ground 
to powder long ago. We have a modern ratio- 
nalised thing intended to combine the advantages 
of both worlds ; and we call it Christianity ; but 
the Christianity of Christ, or of the apostolic 
Christians, it is not. I do not see how, taking 
the only accounts we can turn to on the subject, 
you are able to avoid the conclusion that Jesus 
was an ascetic and the teacher of asceticism; 
nor can I quite agree with you that " the par- 
tialists vainly build upon his figures of speech." 
Though the orientalisms of the gospels render all 
such interpretations extremely uncertain, yet we 



282 Through Rome On, 

know, as to this matter, that the monstrous doc- 
trine from which yon would exonerate Jesus did 
prevail among the Jews after the captivity; and 
it is not probable that a popular exhorter Buch 
as Jesus is described to have been, was superior 
to the vulgar faith on this point, or neglected so 
obvious a means of enforcing his appeals to the 
common imagination. I believe, indeed, that 
little can now be said in support of retaining as 
genuine what follows verse 8 to make up the 
last chapter of Mark in our Testament ; but if we 
keep enough of the remaining accounts to fur- 
nish forth any tolerable picture of their hero, the 
difficulty remains in full force. But you and I 
are really turned in different directions on this 
topic. A being for me to venerate and love, 
especially one for me to imitate, must stand be- 
fore me in more definite outline than Jesus 
stands. The Jesus of faith and fable I cannot 
believe in, and of course can ground nothing on 
him. The Jesus of history is much too dim and 
uncertain a personage to fill the place of the 
former, or to supersede better known exemplars 
in my regard .... Shall you call me an Hegelian 
if I say that it seems to me pure theism and pure 
atheism run into one at last ? Think how bent 
on not being pure theists or pure atheists men 
almost universally are ! Everybody must have 
his say about final causes ; and everybody's ex- 



Through Borne On. 283 

planation is demonstrated to himself by the un- 
satisfactoriness of his neighbour's. I was told 
of God and Religion in my childhood ; I studied 
men's thoughts and utterances on the subject, 
and what a Library of Romance they turned out 
to be ! God had long been in the hands of 
chosen people, who had caged him like a sing- 
ing-bird ; and I had to find him in the cage, or 
woe was to me. One page out of the book of 
the starry heavens put the whole Library of Ro- 
mance to flight. When I learned of the infini- 
tude of suns and systems, with all their attend- 
ant phenomena, that blaze into and out of 
existence through the incomputable eternit}^, 
when I felt the chain of necessary uncalculating 
sequence running through nature, and then 
turned again to the religious explanation, I saw 
that the Christian stories to account for it all 
were as sheer mythology as any of the others. 
And it has always seemed to me since, that the 
great error is to pretend to any ability at all to 
deal in the way of opinion with what my friend 
Mr. Abbot, for instance (see The Radical^ June 
1867, p. 596), calls " The Mystery of Mysteries" 
even while he declares that he clothes it with 
"the highest, not the lowest," that he knows. 
"Why, the Mystery is as infinitely above " the 
highest " as it is above " the lowest " that man 
knows, or by possibility can know. The distinc- 



284 Through Rome On, 

tion between higli and low is wasted here ; and 
this is the mistake our speculative reasoners are 
continually making — Mr. Herbert Spencer takes 
note of it in his First Principles. They will 
have you attribute something to the Absolutely 
Inconceivable ; and if they do not find you at- 
tributing your highest, they at once infer that 
you are attributing your lowest ; while in reality, 
there is no choice or alternative of high or low 
whatever. What if the personal and the imper- 
sonal, the conscious and the unconscious, exhaust 
our categories? It does not follow that they ex- 
haust Absolute Being. Conscious^ unconscious^ 
&c., are terms which express states of existence 
that are conceivable by us : they have no perti- 
nent application to the Inconceivable. The re- 
viewer that I have read over again at your re- 
commendation flounders like the others on this 
track. He considers " whether a creature of 
such limited capacities as man can be correctly 
said to possess anything in common with the 
Author of Nature "; and says that " the doubt is 
dispelled when we take up the antithesis of the 
proposition, and try to suppose the Author of 
Nature as possessing nothing in common with 
man. It is obvious," he adds, " that in such a 
case our idea of God would be that of an im- 
perfect being." The cardinal vice of all such 
pleading as this lies in the fancy that we may 



Through Rome On. 285. 

-indulge any suppositions whatever about " the 
Author of ^Nature." Nature incloses us, as the 
infinite incloses the finite. We can never get 
out of Nature, try how we may ; and so can 
never reach any ground or being outside of Na- 
ture, so as to have an extranatural subject for 
discussion or speculation. We may indeed call 
up a shrivelled abstract nature before the mind's 
eye, and imagine a further external existence, 
like or unlike ourselves, as the author of it : but 
this abstraction is not Nature in reality. That 
surpasses in its vastness the utmost range of our 
faculties, is boundless to our conception, and lays 
bare no central core or heart that we may dissect 
in quest of origin or maker. The reviewer is 
bhnded all the time with the dream-form of a 
Person outside of Nature, about whose charac- 
teristics we are to bandy suppositions, and deter- 
mine his likeness or unlikeness to a microscopic 
speck within Nature of which we are cognisant 
and conscious. Any "idea of God" must "be 
that of an imperfect being " : a perfect being can 
be no subject of the formative imagination; and 
an " idea of God " that tries him by man as a 
model is no more just or reverent than one that 
should fashion him in the likeness of the lion. 
Attraction and repulsion are both in Nature ; but 
a loving God would be as really an imperfect 
being (though not in the same unamiable aspect) 



286 Through Rome On, 

as a hating God : and while both love and hate 
are predicated of the gods of all the religions, a 
tranquil, candid observation of the universe, if it 
discover any hint of primal causality, is pointed 
to a perfection so high above all the qualitied en- 
tanglements of the human imagination, and in 
such ineffable remove from the divinity that 
spider-like man spins out of his own bowels, as to 
make law but a poor groping term which is good 
only to save us from the impiety of conscious 
fetidiism. A multitude of minds at this point 
of time have come to see the folly and mischief 
of talking about will and person here, and can 
not with fidelity to conscience go on with it any 
longer. Do you not perceive that any kind of 
personality is limitation ? and do you not sec that 
every attempt to rest the mind in a teleology 
results in the same fatal animism which you call 
superstition in the earlier and contemporary re- 
ligions outside of Christianity ? It is clear to 
me that all deifying of the inscrutable Power by 
making man, or the qualities of human nature, 
the standard for its characterisation is but child's- 
play and delusion. The one Divine Person that 
you rest with, easily becomes three, or thousands, 
in the coiling or uncoiling of various metaphysics. 
The Trinitarian is no more conscious of super- 
stition in his god-making than you are in yours; 
and the punctual saliens of the superstition is 



Through Rome On. 287 

really not in making the Trinity out of the Per- 
sonal God, as he does ; but in making the Per- 
sonal God out of man to start with, as you do 
equally with him. The pattern once allowed, 
you cannot limit your neighbour in his cutting 
out from it. You think with the reviewer that 
the Universe must come from a Person or from 
Chance. I have already intimated that we can 
have no legitimate opinion about any coming of 
the Universe. I will further remark, that we do 
not infer the Universe from knowledge of a 
universe-producing cause. The Universe is a 
fact. We have it, we know it, and we do not 
know it as an effect. ITor must an arbitrary de- 
finition of Chance be allowed to hamper the ar- 
gument. Chance is not the mere negation of 
personal design, but essentially the conception 
of lawlessness. There is undoubtedly a principle 
of order in Nature ; and this excludes chance. 
The persistive blunder of theists on this subject 
proceeds partly from the convenience of setting 
up Chance to be bowled over ; but more, perhaps, 
from the rage for definition. The nearest that I 
dare come to definition — and this is forced upon 
me by the course of the other side — is to say that 
I cannot think of the inscrutable Power as per- 
sonal or designing, or as being Mind, or anything 
else that we can conceive of. To regard it as 
Mind, is to turn back in the direction of heathen 



288 Through Borne On. 

mythology ; and to my thought, the Jewish fables 
of Elohim and Jehovah, and the Christian fables 
of God and Christ, are obviously akin to the fig- 
ments which the Hindoos and Greeks and other 
" uncovenanted " peoples have indulged about 
their deities ; all wandering and groping together 
in the vain attempt to dispose of the unsolvable 
Problem of the Universe. As soon as you have 
outhned God as a person, you begin to weave 
personal incidents about him. The name, "Je- 
hovah, Jove, or Lord," matters little : the same 
course is run, more or less conspicuously, in all 
the instances. The drama is made and played, 
the scene-shifting goes on, the very stock-phrases 
are repeated after hundreds of years ; — and the 
mischievous lesson always follows. What falsi- 
ties and horrors " the will of God " has sanctified 
in even good men's eyes, and what wrongs and 
abbminations are still covered and perpetuated by 
the use of such handy shibboleths, you know as 
well as I. I agree with the reviewer that praise 
and blame, reward and punishment, are applicable 
to man ; and for the very reason that he is, so to 
speak, the creature of circumstances: and I 
agree as heartily with Mr. Atkinson, that man is 
not properly the subject of anything of the kind 
in the theological sense. Thus I do not believe 
in revenge, or in vindictive penalties. These be- 
long to the theological spirit, and are kept up by 



Through Borne On, 289 

its prevalence. Man is a moral agent, since he 
lias a moral sense and moral impulses, which 
play the part of factors in his conduct and des- 
tiny. He is responsible to his fellows, to the 
community in which he lives, to the world of 
which he is a part : and out of this responsibil- 
ity arises the rightfulness of laws, which affect 
conduct by supplying motives for its regulation. 
.... Orthodoxy involves a daily strain upon good 
sense and good feeling. Your Liberalism lessens 
the strain in its degree, but leaves too much for 
my endurance. The faults of the " design " in 
its physical aspect are as nothing in comparison 
with its horrors from a moral point of view. On 
this ground I could not continue to stand with 
the Liberal theists after my enforced departure 
from Orthodoxy. The latter tells of an elaborate 
Divine preparation for a world of sinlessness and 
happiness, which was not to be. The plan was 
to be disconcerted, overturned in a moment ; 
and yet it was the plan of a Being who knew, 
and foreknew, all things ! Then it introduces 
the fallen angel Lucifer, our Devil ; as if A e ex- 
plained anything, or as if man were not a self- 
working devil enough in himself, under the dis- 
pensation of evil which God had given to the 
world. The mere profession of such a belief in- 
volves denial of all the sound maxims of our 
daily life ; and if its professors acted it out in 



290 Through Rome On. 

their practice, we should have pandemonium in- 
deed. But they do not act it out, any more than 
Liberal theists act out what they retain of the 
tradition of the evil-willing, or evil-accepting, 
God that they insist on as absolute external 
Cause, in preference to admitting the wholesome 
truth, that the subject is as infinitely out of the 
reach of our minds as the stars are beyond the 
touch of our stretched-out fingers. I could not 
hold a doctrine that had to be suppressed and 
contradicted in this way. The necessity of the 
suppression and contradiction was fatal to it as 
soon as I saw how the case stood. A doctrine 
above reason would be no doctrine for us. Only 
by the application of reason to a doctrine are 
we able to receive it as a fact of science or of 
revelation. A doctrine is a truth, or a supposed 
truth, formularised ; that is, put into a shape to 
be grasped by reason. Here is a doctrine not 
above reason, but against reason. When Liberal 
theists have swept away a few ecclesiastical ad- 
* ditions from this dreadful corner-stone, they ac- 
tually fancy they have prepared for mankind a 
firm foundation for religious faith, a Being to 
love and worship and trust in, a hope and expec- 
tation of another life ! I tell you, even the best 
elements of my religiosity turn me from this posi- 
tion of Liberals as compulsorily as from Calvin- 
ism itself. Indeed it would seem to involve the 



Through Rome On. 291 

same negation of the trustworthiness of our 
moral instincts as Calvinism involves. The ac- 
ceptance of evil by Divine Will is the fatal blot. 
"Whether you make it means or end, it is the 
same. Channing's Moral Argument against 
Calvinism reaches farther than its author (pro- 
bably) ever intended. The primal conception of 
theology is personification of the inscrutable 
Force. The perception of the Inscrutable is 
a distinct thing from this primal conception, 
though often confounded with it. I know your 
attempts at reforming the primal conception. 
Time was when I eagerly caught at such plead- 
ings as Mr. Newman and Miss Cobbe, who stand 
high in my esteem, are still putting forth. They 
are clever, and reflect the power as well as the 
benevolence of their authors' minds ; but they 
leave the vexed question just where they find it. 
Men who yet believe that the solar system waited 
on the military operations of Joshua and his 
Jewish host may continue to confess a Perfectly 
Good and Omnipotent Author of Evil; but 
other theists come one by one to admit the limi- 
tation of either goodness or power in the Deity. 
The admission is compelled, and it is fatal. 
They begin by seating a human semblance on a 
throne infinitely above the universe : they end 
by levelling the throne to finite dust. 



292 Through Borne On. 



A KOYEL WITH A PURPOSE. 

Beulah is a lumbering story of 510 pages, 
■which might as appropriately, and perhaps as 
euphoniously, have been entitled "Adoption," 
from the unnatural profusion of adopted children 
out of one orphan asylum which it presents. 
Beulah is a homeless girl, with colourless visage, 
and " a pair of large grey eyes set beneath an 
overhanging forehead," which is also " a boldly- 
projecting forehead, broad and smooth." She 
has intellectual tendencies, a proud, passionate 
nature, tremendous obstinacy, and a blunt way 
of speaking. With these characteristics she goes 
out into the world and encounters an incredible 
amount of brutality from people belonging to 
the upper classes of society. In a moment of 
insensibility from mental anguish and the begin- 
ning of a brain fever, she is picked up by a 
childless man, possessed of wealth, generosity 
and a cultivated mind; who takes her to his 
house to live there as his adopted daughter. 
Upon her arrival, her benefactor's sister casts the 
evil eye upon her, drinks her medicine that she 



Through Borne On, 293 

may not be cured, and is moved to great bitter- 
ness of feeling when she gets well in spite of all 
that could be done to prevent it. The proud 
and high-tempered Beulah will not stay comfort- 
ably adopted, but after a flare-up with the sister 
turns her back upon the house of her generous 
protector, and without a word of explanation or 
farewell quits him, as she believes forever, and 
returns in her old clothes to the orphan asylum. 
He goes after her, having found out the truth 
from a servant, and prevails over her resolution 
of independence so far, that she consents to live 
in his house while she pursues her studies at the 
common-school. She graduates with the highest 
honours, takes a teacher's place to support herself, 
goes to live at a cheap boarding-house, and 
writes philosophical essays for the local maga- 
zine. Working hard all day and reading all 
night, with nursing fever patients for a holiday 
relaxation, would infallibly bring a woman in 
real life to the brink of the grave at least ; but 
Beulah only has a fever without going to bed for 
it, and lives on to be inconsolably wretched be- 
cause her psychological writers fail to supply her 
with a satisfactory answer to Pilate's question — ■ 
"What is Truth ?" This is the burden of the 
book: philosophy vain, Christianity true and 
satisfying the needs of the human spirit. Beu- 
lah's reading and reflection had brought her to 



294 Through Rome On. 

the rejection of Christianity as a supernatural 
revelation ; and finding that the philosophers are 
unable to solve the problem of man's origin and 
destiny, she grows heartsick and despairing. 
Towards the end she is presented to us as having 
become a devout Christian believer; not, it would 
appear, through any confutation of the argu- 
ments which had seemed to her to lie against the 
system of dogmatic religion, but from disgust 
with the metaphysicians and the craving of her 
heart for repose beneath the shadow of an oracle. 
It is no small comfort to the reader, in taking 
leave of her on the five-hundred-and-tenth page, 
to know that she is happily delivered from the 
mazes of psychology and ontology in which she 
has wandered so painfully and so long ; and that 
her cravings are appeased not only with a reli- 
gion, but with the destined husband also. Indeed, 
one may well doubt from the story itself whether 
her protracted anguish of mind proceeded more 
from the unsatisfactoriness of pantheism or the 
separation from her guardian. Dr. Heartwell 
returns after his five years' roaming, finds Beu- 
lah at the top of the house playing the melodeon, 
pops the question in a somewhat arbitrary man- 
ner, and is then and there straightway accepted, 
much to his satisfaction, to hers, and, as has been 
intimated, to the reader's also. The author is so 
much wrapped up in her heroine that, notwith- 



Through Rome On, 295 

standing her views of the indispensableness of 
faith to happiness in this life and salvation in an- 
other, she does not take time to convert the other 
prominent characters who, according to her view, 
have erred and strayed from the way like lost 
sheep; but only holds out the hope that Dr. 
Asbury may at length be brought into the fold 
through Butler's Analogy and the still more 
powerful pleadings of a good wife ; while Heart- 
well himself, the hero, if the book have a hero, 
is infidel still at the last accounts, though, we 
are to understand, in a hopeful condition from 
the constant presence of Beulah at his side. 

Notwithstanding the time and pains which 
have evidently been bestowed on this work, the 
writer has completely failed to enter into the 
mind of the sceptic, and to grasp and understand 
the real difficulties, negative and positive, with 
which that mind is beset from the start, and 
through which it labours, well or ill, to the end 
of its course. Beulah is a fancy sketch ; not 
without verisimilitude certainly, but very, very 
unreal. Poverty, thwarted love, and the work- 
ing of these upon a morbid pride and sensitive- 
ness, played an important part in the trials of 
mind under which Beulah was so near sinking. 
This is what happens in most actual cases : that 
is, other and various elements unite with and in- 
fluence the conditions and results of the most 



296 Through Rome On. 

earnest speculative inquiry. Faith is a matter 
of physiology and education. It has, of course, 
its dialectical side also; and as to this, it was 
wisdom in our writer to jump the attempt to 
establish its pretensions by any regular argu- 
ment. The changes of life, the climacterics, as 
they are called, have an important relation to 
this subject. Many minds have a special affinity 
towards dogmatic systems early in life, and are 
quite incapable of religious faith at a later pe- 
riod ; while others are necessarily sceptical and 
unbelieving till long years have rolled by and 
the atoms of their bodies have been many times 
renewed; when the opposite conversion is as 
mysteriously wrought in them. The circum- 
stances of each one's daily existence enter unfail- 
ingly into character, conduct, and habits of 
thought. In this light, some phases of Beulah 
are natural enough. But that a strong intellect, 
joined to a resolute will and an active working 
benevolence, as in this case, should flounder so 
miserably is, be it repeated, very unreal. " ' I 
want to know whether I have ever lived before; 
whether there is not an anterior life of my soul, 
of which I get occasional glimpses, and the mem- 
ory of which haunts and disquiets me.' " (F. 321.) 
These are subtle, curious questions, which may 
possess attraction and interest for a certain class 
of thinkers; but what healthy mind would re- 



Through Borne On, 297 

main permanently disquieted for want of the im- 
possible solution ? It is certain that Christianity 
no more answers such questions than does any 
system of unbelief; and if one finds repose from 
them through embracing the former, it must be by 
dropping them at once, or reducing them to their 
proper level of unprofitable puzzles; a course 
which is not less open to the sceptic than to the 
believer. " Life is real, life is earnest." This is 
not matter of faith, but of positive knowledge. 
The duties of life, each one's duties, are clear, 
plain things enough, if there be no turning 
away of the mind, no idle dreaming when work 
is to be done ; and happiness, in the usual order 
of nature, waits on the performance of duty. 
Such a case as Beulah's would be one of disease. 
Doubtless, the desire and pursuit of truth are 
natural to the healthy mind; nor are they vain, 
nor their legitimate results a mockery. Knowl- 
edge may be acquired by man, though not all 
knowledge. Beulah longed for " ' knowledge of 
the deep things of philosophy, the hidden won- 
ders of the universe, the awful mysteries of the 
shadowy spirit realm.' " (P. 323.) She would 
have been satisfied with nothing less than om- 
niscience. One thing that Dr. Heartwell said to 
her was very much to the point : — " ^ How can 
the finite soul cope with Infinite Being V " — ^but 
she only saw in it a fling at human philosophy. 



298 Through Rome On. 

Another unreal character in the book is 
Cornelia Graham. Cornelia, somewhat strong- 
minded and therefore a sceptic, is dying of heart 
disease. Concerning her, the pious Mrs. Wil- 
liams speaks thus : " * She has lived only for this 
world and its pleasures. Is she afraid of the 
world to come ? Can she die peacefully % ' " 
Beulah replies : " ' She will die calmly, but not 
hopefully. She does not believe in Christian- 
ity.' " From the account given of Cornelia it is 
impossible to say whether she had deserved Mrs. 
Williams's description of her or not. If she had 
indeed lived only for pleasure, negligent of duty, 
and turning away from goodness to the end of 
her life, it was not to be expected that that end 
would be peaceful and happy. Death is com- 
monly the echo of life ; and, as conscience can 
never be completely extinguished in any one, so 
if life have been wasted and profaned, death 
must needs be troubled and unholy. An un- 
happy life, too, will in many cases close darkly 
and gloomily ; though often, again, the sense of 
the relief at hand, the welcome deliverance from 
wrong and pain and growing burdens, will avail 
to soothe and cheer the parting soul with a won- 
drous consolation. We have known Cornelia as 
the spoiled child and disappointed w^oman ; for it 
may be gathered from the narrative that the 
proud daughter of the Grahams had cherished 



Through Rome On. 299 

for Eugene more than a sister's love. Beulah, 
who knew how her life had been soured, could 
not expect it to exhale in sweetness at the close. 
She has confidence enough in her friend's nerves 
to predict that the approaching death will be 
calm ; but, to carry out the notions and aims of 
the book, she is made to add very positively that 
poor Cornelia will not die hopefully, on account 
of not believing in Christianity. The other in- 
fluences, it will be seen, are put out of sight : it 
is the absence of Christian faith that is to make 
the death-bed so sad and hopeless. Now it is 
just here that I object to the character of Cor- 
nelia as unreal. The writer has undertaken to 
construct an argument for Christianity from the 
picture of a death-bed without it. The character 
of Cornelia is carefully shaped to suit the design. 
It seems to be drawn for a vigorous intellect and 
good heart pining for the spiritual sustenance 
which Christianity alone can supply. Not to 
speak of exceptional instances, but proceeding 
under the general law of human nature, we may 
take the ground that a real Cornelia would not 
have pined thus, would not have lived unhappily 
and died hopelessly, as here represented. The 
very statement given at page 377 of the motives 
influencing the supposititious Cornelia to reject 
Christianity is not characteristic of a highly in- 
telligent and conscientious woman. Doubtless, 



300 Through Borne On. 

it is most soothing to natural sensibility, other 
things being equal, to die in the faith of one's 
fathers, to be in sympathy with loved ones and 
with such as minister at the dying pillow. This 
of course is independent of the truth or falsity of 
particular creeds, and is as applicable to the 
death-bed of a Mohammedan as of a Christian. 
But as to this matter of hopefulness: — the most 
beautiful hope of all is that which inspires the 
unselfish soul for friends and brethren, for fellow- 
creatures and the universe of God. The selfish 
hope of heavenly enjoyments in another life may 
be held too without Christianity. Surely, the 
flaming Hell of Christian theology is not needed 
to bring hope to the bedside of the dying. Much 
more of terror than of hoj)e lies in the creeds of 
the churches. " Evangelical " teachings are cer- 
tainly not "glad tidings of great joy"; and 
" salvation," in the technical sense, is a most im- 
probable thing to be attained to by the best of 
mankind. From two passages in the book un- 
der consideration, it may be suspected that the 
writer is not purely Evangelical, but leans to the 
TJniversalist heresy. Clara says (page 351),^ 
" * My faith teaches that the evil you so bitterly 
deprecate is not eternal, shall finally be crushed, 
and the harmony you crave pervade all realms.' " 
This is hopeful, certainly; but it is not a fair 
representative specimen of Christian faith. The 



Through Rome On. 301 

other passage (pp. 393-4) concerns the fate of 
Cornelia : " Cornelia had not believed : was she 
utterly lost? Beulah asked herself this ques- 
tion, and shrank from the answer." Unreality 
again. Beulah, be it remembered, is a person of 
strong understanding with good moral instincts. 
Such a person could have scarcely a moment's 
struggle with such a question; and if it were 
oftener asked of themselves by clear-minded, 
good-hearted men and women yet in the meshes 
of Athanasian tradition, the monstrous supersti- 
tion from which it springs would crumble even 
faster than we see it crumbling now. As it is, 
nobody believes in hell for his relations and 
friends. It is a rod in soak for strangers, and 
the incorrigible world whose room will be so 
much better than their company when we are 
snugly settled with our acquaintances in heaven. 
The shrinking is when we first ask ourselves if 
we really do believe any longer in the time- 
honoured doctrine which we imbibed with our 
mothers' milk, and which we have been so im- 
pressively taught if any one reject he shall with- 
out doubt perish everlastingly. We do not 
shrink from an evasion of the doctrine's applica- 
tion in any particular case that falls under our 
observation. That BeulaKs author has dared 
to put the query into shape, repeating it vehe- 
mently on a succeeding page, indicates that she 



302 Through Rome On, 

seriously doubts, if she has not already rejected, 
the dogma of Endless Misery. 

On the last page (as elsewhere) this view is 
taken of the sceptic : " ' You turn from Revelation 
because it contains some things you cannot com- 
prehend ; yet you plunge into a deeper, darker 
mystery when you embrace the theory of au 
eternal, self-existing universe, having no intelli- 
gent creator, yet constantly creating intelligent 
beings. Sir, can you understand how matter 
creates mind ? ' " This is a misconception. The 
sceptic rejects what purports to be a Revelation 
through Christ or Mohammed or any other 
teacher, not because it contains some things 
which he cannot comprehend, but because the 
grounds on which it challenges his acceptance do 
not seem to him to be solid grounds ; in other 
words, because it does not seem to him to be a 
genuine Revelation. In like manner, he does 
not set up any counter dogmatic system of the 
Universe as a parallel to the rejected Revelation. 
He does not, like the Christian, lay down propo- 
sitions in unsearchable things. That matter and 
mind exist is not a theory of his, but a self- 
evident, admitted fact. That the processes of 
Nature follow a certain Order, or Law, is so 
clear, simple, and inevitable a deduction of rea- 
son, that it is equally a matter of positive science, 
and removed from the category of speculative 



Through Rome On. 303 

systems. These principia are common to be- 
liever and unbeliever alike ; the former holding 
them not by faith, as supernaturally revealed, 
but by knowledge, as the unbeliever holds them. 
The essential difference between the two is, that 
the unbeliever stops here, with what is known, 
admitting his ignorance of final causes, and re- 
fusing to dogmatise, whatever he may conjecture, 
concerning that of which he knows nothing; 
while the believer refuses to be satisfied with the 
facts of consciousness and experience, and what 
may be tested by human reason ; and, going be- 
yond these, propounds a formal teleology, and 
lays claim to supernatural information in tran- 
scendental things. This, the essential difference 
between the two parties, is what such writers as 
the author oiJBeulah are continually losing sight 
of. Of course unbelievers have their own specu- 
lative opinions as well as believers their religious 
doctrines, concerning the unknown ; and it is 
conceivable that errors and absurdities may find 
a place in the one as well as in the other. This 
however is always to be noted to the credit of 
the infidel side : that its opinions are not laid 
down as the utterances of an infallible oracle, 
which it is a sin to controvert. To the ques- 
tion, " ' Can you understand how matter creates 
mind ? ' " the husband is not allowed to make 
any answer. " He seemed pondering her words," 



304 Through Home On. 

sajs the book. Yet the answer to them is ready 
and fall. Let us suppose Dr. Heartwell to make 
it as follows : I do not pretend to understand 
how matter creates mind. I do not affirm that 
matter does create mind ; and if it does, I freelj 
confess that the how is beyond my comprehen- 
sion. Of creation, in the sense of making some- 
thing out of nothing, I have no conception what- 
ever : it is to me inconceivable. That mind may 
be the phenomenal product of certain material 
conditions I find no difficulty in believing, re- 
membering that the harmonies and discords of 
sound are in this way evolved as the result of 
particular mechanical acts and arrangements 
which, in their order of sequences, I can trace 
but a very little way. On my window-sill I 
place tightened strings: the air, blowing "where 
it listeth," touches presently these strings as if 
with human finger : further perturbations ensue 
in the mysterious ether, which quickly reach my 
ear, and, tlirough that portal, my brain ; when I 
enjoy the music of the eolian harp. " Can you 
understand how matter creates " — music? The 
perception of sound is equally a part of the mind 
with thinking. Sound is as wonderful and as in- 
comprehensible as thought. For aught I know, 
thought may be " created " by matter as well as 
sound. As to the theory you ascribe to me of 
an eternal self-existing Universe, I am at least in 



Through Home On. 305 

no worse dilemma with it than you are with yonr 
theory of an eternal self-existing Deity ; and you 
have no more right to require me to give up my 
view of the Universe because I cannot explain 
the Universe, than I have to require you to give 
up your hypothesis of God because you cannot 
explain God. The Universe is a fact ; God (in 
your sense) is an inference. I am not able to 
discover any origin for the Universe, and so I 
stop here, seeing neither necessity nor probabil- 
ity for any inference beyond. If I may not be- 
lieve in an uncreated Universe, then neither may 
you believe in an uncreated Personal Designer 
of the Universe. I do not feel under any neces- 
sity of accounting for the existence of the Uni- 
verse. To attempt to account for it by suppos- 
ing an external cause, would commit me to an 
endless round of hypotheses ; since for the Cause 
of the Universe would have to be supposed an- 
other Cause, and so on, ad infinitum. You no 
more solve the ontological problem than I solve 
it : you only remove the question a step farther. 
Besides that your hypothesis fails to solve the 
problem, it is furthermore beset with grave in- 
tellectual and moral difficulties. I am obliged 
to reject it. I do not feel unhappy or in way 
the worse in consequence of rejecting it. On 
the contrary, I feel freer and better than when I 
held it. The tendency to suppose supernatural 



306 Through Borne On. 

causes for what we cannot understand becomes 
weaker and weaker as we grow and learn. This 
is true of individuals and of the race. The 
remedy for fanaticism (from the Greek cpaivotiai) 
is the cultivation of a healthy mind in a healthy 
body. 

Let us hope that if there shall be a Beulah- 
Heartwell case in reality, the husband will give 
this answer to his wife. It may open her eyes 
and relieve her heart at the same time ; and in 
the light of it she may find her true deliverance 
from the "deeper, darker mystery" which she 
jumped at Christianity to escape. Deep indeed 
is the m^^stery of the Universe ; yet the darkness 
which broods over those awful depths wears no 
blackness of horror to the philosophic mind. 
That mind sees no immortal Devil ambushed 
there, clothed with superhuman power, animated 
by eternal hate, fed upon lost human souls, and 
winning countless victories over God and man. 
This is the orthodox Christian view of the sub- 
ject ; but it is one from which the disabused ra- 
tional imderstanding turns away with honest 
disgust. The true philosopher is reverent and 
silent in the presence of the Incomprehensi- 
ble. The green world of sense and knowledge 
where he finds himself placed furnishes em- 
ployment to all his faculties. He does not deny 
supernal spheres : he only refuses to make or to 



Through Home On. 307 

bow down to assertions for which he sees no suf- 
ficient foundation. Here he finds the appropri- 
ate sphere of his activity : of what is beyond he 
confesses himself ignorant. The supernatnralist 
of course knows no more of the beyond than he, 
but is afflicted with what Socrates called the 
worst kind of ignorance : the conceit of knowing 
what one does not know. Prate as men may, 
the Mystery is there : as deep as ever when the 
Bible is opened; as dark as ever when the 
Church has lighted her wax candles. 



308 Through Eome On, 



ODD THEODICY. 

Mr. James Fitzjames Stephen^, who is not 
only a lawyer of standing, but a shrewd and lively 
writer on themes outside of his profession, has 
produced a book called " Liberty, Equality, Fra- 
ternity"; which sets forth a variety of theism 
that will hardly tend to soothe the troubled 
minds of the church people. I think I correctly 
characterised the theological part of the book 
when I spoke of it the other day to Prof. New- 
man as "odd theodicy." Odd though it be, Mr. 
Stephen pleads for it with much apparent earnest- 
ness, and does not seem to have any suspicion 
that it presents to us a " religion of inhumanity," 
as it has been called by one of his critics. Mr. 
Stephen, while inferring his God from a con- 
templation of the universe, is ingenuous enough 
to admit that " the Author of such a world " 
cannot be truly or probably asserted to be a 
purely benevolent being. He does not believe 
that God is good, in the ordinary acceptation of 
the word in relation to mankind. " The general 
constitution of things," including pain, and what 



Through Rome On. 309 

we call wrong, he thinks " is neither just nor un- 
just, right nor wrong. It simply is. It affects 
the question of the benevolence, not the question 
of the justice, of its author. The idea of justice 
and right is subsequent to the idea of law'', &c. 
Mr. Stephen here makes what is perhaps a good 
defence of a non-intelligent impersonal God ; but 
it does not seem to me to avail for the Being he 
has described on page 311 (of the American edi- 
tion) as possessing mind and will, and so person- 
ality, and as having called sentient creatures into 
existence. These creatures, Mr. Stephen thinks, 
can have no rights before God, " not even the 
right of existence"; and God cannot violate jus- 
tice in regard to them. The expression "not 
even the right of existence" seems to be em- 
ployed by this writer to strengthen his assertion 
that "as against God or fate, whichever you 
please, men have no rights at all"; as implying 
that the right of existence is the first and clearest 
of rights if there be any at all; and that if crea- 
tures have not this primal 'right, they can of 
course have no other right. I remark on this, 
I. That it makes an important difference in the 
argument whether "you please" to suppose a 
blind "fate" or an intelligent "God" as the 
source of "the general constitution of things": 
and II. That "the right of existence" would 
seem to be precisely the one which the creature 



310 Through Rome On. 

could not have against God ; but III. That, 
given existence, as in the actual order, derived 
from an intelligent God, there immediately arises 
the distinct and indefeasible right to immunity 
from pain ; for pain in the creature, inflicted or 
allowed by the Creator, is cruelty, is injustice, is 
wrong, according to the nature of things, of which 
we find the perception within us, and which may 
be called the common-law of the case, the^*w5 
whose violation is injustice. 



Through Rome On. 311 



THE SPECTATOR ON THE BELFAST LECTURE. 

When the London Sjpectator pronounces that 
"the * Unknown and the Unknowable' is dis- 
covered, and is matter," it should, I take it, be 
understood to be uttering a dictum of its own, 
and not one delivered by Professor Tyndall. 
That Matter (including Force) contains the limits 
of man's faculty of knowledge, and that it is un- 
philosophical to theorise about any existence, 
knowable or unknowable, beyond Matter, are no 
doubt just inferences from data supplied by the 
Professor; but these inferences and these data 
do not pretend to bring us to any discovery of 
Absolute Existence, as the Spectator would fain 
have its readers understand from its blazonry of 
the definite article and capitals and quotation 
marks, when it says — "^Ae 'Unknown and the 
Unknowable' is discovered." It concludes, it 
says, from the entire tone of the lecture, that 
Professor Tyndall is of opinion that Matter is 
self-existent. A fairer conclusion, I think, would 
be, that the Professor has no opinion whatever 
as to how Matter exists. " Any cause for matter 



312 Through Rome On. 

is an inference, a guess, which no scientific man 
is warranted [in] making." Certainly. A cause 
is something which observation shows us to have 
invariably preceded something else which we 
call its effect. I^ow as observation does not and 
can not show us anything preceding Matter, it is 
unphilosophical to talk about a cause here, and 
a misapplication of the term " which no scientific 
man is warranted [in] making." The Professor 
discerns in Matter " the promise and potency of 
every form and quality of life." I think that 
every intelligent and unshackled mind examining 
the subject must discern the same thing. The 
potentialities of Matter are to the human mind 
certainly exhaustless. It is supererogation and 
folly to limit those potentialities, and invent the 
abstraction of an immaterial Force to supply the 
deficiency. The Spectator thinks that Professor 
Tyndall's kind of Matter does not " explain the 
visible phenomena." It does not make us om- 
niscient, certainly. It does, however, help us to 
a partial explanation, and one that is satisfactory 
as far as it goes. It does not explain " the con- 
sciousness of free will," complains the Spectator. 
I venture to think that the consciousness of free 
will is as explicable by it as the consciousness 
that the earth is stationary. We of to-day have 
an advantage over the men of old in a knowledge 
of astronomy and natural philosophy which cor- 



Through Borne On. 313 

rects our seeming " consciousness " that the earth 
does not move ; and we know that it is not a 
consciousness of a fact which is no fact, but an 
erroneous construction of the evidence yielded 
by the senses, which misleads uninstructed minds 
still on the subject of the earth's motion. In 
like manner, we are blessed now with a biology, 
a psychology, a phreno physiology, and a mental 
philosophy, which, even while the S])ectator 
writes, and the churches are rolling their thunder 
against the profane inroads of science on their 
sacred ground, are- helping us to a more and 
more searching analysis of " the consciousness of 
free will," and showing that whatever will is, 
and in whatever qualified sense freedom may be 
predicated of it, absolute free will, that is, un- 
caused, self-determining will, has no more real 
existence than uncaused brain or uncaused human 
being. 



314 Through Borne On. 



DR. DEWEY'S THEISM. 

Dr. Dewey, in his remarks upon Mr. Mor- 
ley's Voltaire, which I find in the Liberal Chris- 
tian of Dec. 13, takes the ground now usually 
occupied by those Liberals who are yet support- 
ers of a definite theism. He says, — " The argu- 
ment is, that suffering in this world disproves the 
doctrine of the divine goodness ; and fairly car- 
ried out it would be, that the least suffering dis- 
proves it." This argument, stated somewhat 
more amply than Dr. Dewey has here put it, 
forms indeed one strong position taken by ad- 
vanced Liberals against the doctrine of the 
theists. The existence of Evil, comprehending 
physical and moral suffering, and moral wrong 
of all sorts besides, constitutes a strong presump- 
tion against the view that there is an underived 
Being, absolute in goodness and wisdom and 
power, the creator and governor of the universe. 
Of course, in strict logic, the least bit of Evil 
taken separately sustains the presumption as 
really as all Evil considered in its totality. I 
confess, with due respect for Dr. Dewey and the 



Through Rome On, 315 

many able and good men who hold with him, 
the presmnption seems to me too strong to be 
overthrown by anything they have hitherto been 
able to bring ao-ainst it. Of course there can be 
no demonstration on either side ; and if the ex- 
istence and character of a First Cause were a 
legitimate subject for discussion at all, — if we 
did not perceive in the very naming of the sub- 
ject that it absolutely precluded the possibility 
of any sure step or rational conclusion of knowl- 
edge, — it could only be at the best a feeble 
attempt at balancing probabilities. But Dr. 
Dewey and other advocates of definite theism, as 
stated above, have a way of shutting their e^^es 
to this fact and setting up their own assumption 
and referring to it throughout the argument, as 
if it were even something more, instead of less,, 
than a probability; as if it were something 
proved, or something in the nature of a moral 
certainty. "I stand for pure logic", says the 
Doctor in the paper before me: "I stand upon 
the ground of naked truth ", &c. These be brave 
words ; but the immediate sequel shows how far 
they are from describing their writer's real posi- 
tion, which is not at all the ground of " pure 
logic" and "naked truth", but simply wish, 
preference, predetermination. In the very next 
sentence he goes on : " If there is no valid evi- 
dence for a good First Cause and for immortal 



316 Through Rome On. 

life, I will go down into darkness and despair, 
and will die sincere and brave, if I must die in 
misery." This is very plain. He declares that 
if the argument goes against him, he will em- 
brace desperation and death rather than admit 
the conclusion that offends him. This is not the 
language of a pure seeker of truth : rather is it 
that of a man of prejudice, wedded to his own 
darling opinion ; anxious indeed that that should 
be made out to be true, but determined to cling 
to it still if at last " no valid evidence " remain 
to support it. It will be seen that Dr. Dewey 
takes occasion to attach to his doctrine of deity 
another favourite dogma, that of immortal life. 
!No doubt he feels the futility of relying on logic 
to establish these traditions, which have always 
made their appeal to imagination and excited 
feeling from the judgment of the understanding. 
Grant certain premises of the theologian, and he 
can then argue out some at least of his conclu- 
fiions in a very logical manner ; but the logic is 
always born of the concession; the premises 
themselves disdain logic. Mr. Leconte, in his 
recent lectures to prove the personality of the 
First Cause, affirms for a starting-point, that the- 
ism neither requires nor admits of proof. Dr. 
Dewey himself has said something similar to 
this, though I cannot now refer to his precise 
words, nor to the work in which they occur. 



I 



Through Rome On, 317 

Tlie common reply of theists to the argument 
from the existence of evil, that evil exists be- 
cause the present order of the universe is impos- 
sible without it, is no answer at all. It is a mere 
begging of the question. Either God was obliged 
to create the present order of the universe, or he 
was not obliged to create it. If he was obliged, 
then he is not the Absolute Being they affirm, 
and, so far as they and their postulate are con- 
cerned, the argument is at an end here. If, on 
the other hand, he w^as not obliged (and nearly 
all theists will say he was not), then it follows 
that he has chosen to adopt a plan fraught with 
evil ; and, as the free choice of evil is in contra- 
diction to goodness, he is therefore not the per- 
fectly Good Being they affirm. Dr. Dewey re- 
peats the stock plea " that no conceivable world 
of free, progressive, moral agency could be made 
without exposure to difficulty, interference, col- 
lision and pain. Suffering is a necessary element 
in the problem of freely-wrought moral improve- 
ment." The terms " difficulty ", " collision ", &c. 
are here employed sophistically to avoid the 
mention of moral wrong, commonly called wick- 
edness^ which as well as suffering goes to make 
np the Evil that constitutes so strong an argu- 
ment against the assumption of the theists. 
These bad elements are necessary, we are told, 
to "the problem of freely-wrought moral im- 



818 Through Rome On. 

provement." But why "the problem" at all? 
What is this " freely- wrought moral improve- 
ment " that Dr. Dewey talks about ? Why does 
it take the monstrous shape of a problem— a 
rolled-up ball, that is— in which the hand of 
Deity itself has knotted Good and Bad together, 
60 that both are equally divine ? A purely- good 
world alone can be worthy of a jjurely-good God. 
A mixed world, such as ours is, if it point to any 
God at all, must point to a mixed God. This 
consideration led men long ages ago to conceive 
of two coexistent Gods, a good God and an evil 
God ; and to attribute the existing order of 
things to the two respectively. The theists of 
to-day, represented by Dr. Dewey, reject this 
dual conception, and, as it seems to me most 
unreasonably, insist on inferring one Supreme 
God of perfect benevolence, wisdom, and power, 
from a view of the physical and moral universe. 
The fundamental mistake, I think, is in attempt- 
ing an inference where from the nature of the 
case no inference can legitimately be drawn. The 
universe indeed abounds in facts from which we 
may properly draw inferences within its own 
order ; but of anything outside of this order it 
gives us no intimation whatever. There may be 
a God external to the universe ; but that there 
is such a God is no logical inference from the 
universe. When I say that there may be this 



Through Borne On. 319 

external God, I of course mean no more than 
that I can show or know nothing to the contrary. 
To my mind, there is a shocking irreverence in 
the common babbling on this theme. And what 
is all the talk about trinity and unity and person- 
ality of God but babbling % What is all ecclesi- 
astical tradition on the subject but raving and, 
as Coleridge said of Calvinism, superfetation of 
blasphemy ? Following up its cardinal error 
of undertaking an inference without suitable 
grounds. Theism is generally found involving 
itself next in the entanglements of the Free-Will 
notion ; setting up in man himself a second First- 
Cause as a foil to the first. Out of this most un- 
philosophical notion proceeds the theory of the 
"world of free progressive moral agency" spoken 
of by Dr. Dewey ; the theory of that impossible 
free-will virtue which is so highly rated by the 
Deity that to allow of its production he sanc- 
tioned the maxim the end justifies the means, 
by creating a mundane order to which wicked- 
ness and undeserved suffering belong as neces- 
sary incidents. Though Dr. Dewey is free from 
one special difficulty under which Orthodox 
Christian theists labour at this point, viz. : the 
having to reconcile free-will virtue with effica- 
cious Divine grace and justification by faith ; and 
though his Deity is altogether a less repulsive 
abstraction than theirs ; yet is he not less than 



320 Through Borne On. 

they under the hoary delusion which degrades 
by theologising the moral conception of the uni- 
verse, makes God out of man, sees in man a 
First Cause in the act of willing, and proclaims 
for each human worm of the dust the astounding 
fate of sempiternity. 



Towards the close of his remarks in the Lib- 
eral Christian^ Dr. Dewey admits that "the 
ideas of personality, of intelligence, of goodness, 
in the First Cause, are to be received with ex- 
treme caution, and with the distinct concession 
that we can know nothing of the mode of their 
existence or of their working." These words in- 
dicate that the difference between him and the 
people he calls atheists is, that while he " with 
extreme caution " rehabilitates the Personal God 
of theology, and passionately exclaims against all 
who hold back from the religious worship of ab- 
stractions, they — the atheists — ^loving as much as 
he the beauty of holiness, yearning as strongly as 
he for divine sympathy and help, wishing as 
heartily as he that the highest ideals might be 
realised, the crooked ways made straight, and 
justice and goodness bring about a Heaven for 
all sentient beings, are obliged in honesty to 
avow that the deus ex machina he proclaims so 
loudly is not only unproved, but, if we jump #11 



Through Hume On. 321 

the logic of the case and assume his existence, is 
essentially a distinct being from the First Cause, 
the Infinite ; as must be any being that man is 
capable of imagining. I do not say there is no 
imaginable God; but I say the Infinite is not 
imaginable. When Dr. Dewey speaks of '' the 
two parties on this question," and of one of them 
ascribing this universe " to nothing," he must be 
held to a strict account of terms. Does he mean 
that the party he objects to holds that this uni- 
verse came at some period out of nothing ? which 
would be a positive doctrine of origin ; or does 
he mean that the party refuses to assign any ori- 
gin whatever for the universe ; declares that its 
beginning is as inscrutable as its end ; that as to 
any origin or outside to it, that is absolutely un- 
searchable and even inconceivable ? [The word 
" universe " is here of course used in its very 
widest possible sense, including worlds, systems, 
— in short, All Nature.] If he supposes himself 
in conflict with persons who hold that there was 
a point in time or eternity when there was noth- 
ing, and that out of that nothing the universe 
came into existence, he is probably fighting a 
phantom of his own imagination : at least I know 
of no one now-a-days who maintains that Some- 
thing was made out of Nothing, except theists, 
and Dr. Dewey is not contending against theists. 
But when he speaks of ascribing the universe to 



322 Through Borne On. 

nothing, lie probably means the refusal to assign 
any specific origin to the universe. This he con- 
siders not so good in logic as to suppose "a 
principle which, in whatever respects unknown, 
must be conceived of as embracing in it an in- 
finite wisdom and goodness." But how can logic 
carry us outside of the universe anyhow % Logic 
is an exercise of the human mind within its own 
order, which is the order of nature, the universe. 
If the supposed ^Hmor6?zVm be outside of this 
order, it is quite beyond the cognisance of the 
human mind, and^so no subject of logic what- 
ever. As a human idea, the prirriordium is 
within the order of the universe, and so an ens 
rationis : let logic deal with it in this light, and 
v/hat do we find ? The supposed "principle", if 
real, must be a principle in the universe. Dr. 
Dewey does not give us any logical process 
which fairly results in such a principle as its 
conclusion. He w^ould infer an uncreated cre- 
ative principle from the existence of the universe : 
not a sound inference ; since we know no more 
of uncreated creative principle than of uncreated 
universe. Next, he would infer " infinite wis- 
dom and goodness" in the originating principle 
from the aspect of the universe, which he calls 
"full of beneficence and intelligence": unsound 
again, and in the very premiss. The aspect of 
the universe is not what he says it is. It is not 



Through Borne On. . 323 

^'full of beneficence and intelligence " ; but has 
wide room for and actually displays a vast extent 
of tlie opposite qualities. Plague, pestilence and 
famine, battle, murder, pain, cruel t}", triumphant 
injustice, affliction of the innocent, ignorance, 
folly, wrong of all sorts, abound in that little 
spot of the nni verse with which we are acquainted. 
If a principle of Goodness be necessary to ac- 
count for goodness in the universe, then a prin- 
ciple of Badness must be necessary to account 
for badness in the universe. If the unknown 
principle " must be conceived of as embracing 
in it an infinite wisdom and goodness" when we 
look on the fair side of the universe, must it not 
in equal strictness of logic " be conceived of as 
embracing in it an infinite " unwisdom and bad- 
ness when we look on the foul side ? Dr. 
Dewey's " little text " does not answer the argu- 
ment at all. " The plan of suffering in the sys- 
tem " is not vindicated, regarded as the intelli- 
gent " plan *' of an All-powerful Personal Being; 
but a calm view of man as he is, and of the uni- 
verse in relation to all its sentient parts, is over- 
whelmingly against the doctrine of theism in all 
its Christian phases at least. It may be worth 
while here to refer to the recently promulgated 
opinion of Mr. James Fitzjames Stephen ; who 
in his book entitled " Liberty, Equality, Frater- 
Dity ", declares his belief in a Deity as the author 



324: ■ Through Rome On, 

of tlie universe, but gives up tlie attribute of 
goodness as commonly understood. 

^' But," sa3's Dr. Dewej, " most of those who 
call in question all past reasonings concerning 
God still admit that there is a God — admit, that 
is to say, that there is a First Cause." Are there 
any, I would ask Dr. Dewey, who do " call in 
question all past reasonings concerning God"? 
The Doctor seems quietly to assume that " all 
past reasonings " have been on his side ; but in 
truth, his theism has always been matter of dis- 
pute among reasoners, and though the scientific 
men of our day present the latest phase of the 
argument, reinforced with fresh illustration, and 
adapted to a more widely enlightened popular 
intelligence, yet it is the old, old argument still. 
Philosophy neither affirms nor denies a First 
Cause. Cause is a term of succession. Priority 
and invariableness of antecedence are the neces- 
sary elements which combine in the notion of a 
cause. Ignorance has dabbled in prosopopoeia 
and invented gods many and lords many ; but 
Philosophy has never yet been able to trace any- 
thing t© a god, much less to a First God. The 
pretence of doing so is grossly unphilosophical. 
"Where we can no longer follow the order of se- 
quences the term causes has no longer signifi- 
cance. If when we have reached the bounds of 
the universe our inclination lead us to guess at 



Through Rome On, 325 

sometliing beyond, tliat is, properly speaking, no 
cause of the universe : it is not something which 
we have observed to be invariably followed by 
the production of a universe : it is only an ab- 
straction which we conceive of as next to the 
universe. We may have an endless series of 
such abstractions, but no one of them can be, 
philosophically speaking, a cause : how, then, is 
it possible to reach a First Cause in the Un- 
knowable % " No one of the English scientists 
denies it," says Dr. Dewey. Probably not ; for 
the English scientists remember the limits of the 
human mind, and refrain from dogmatising on 
the subject. As to Comte and Strauss, whom 
the Doctor also refers to : the former's fanciful 
" Eeligion of Humanity" does not pretend to 
transcend the universe ; and Strauss expressly 
declares that logical thinking can never carry us 
outside of this Cosmos. "If," says the great 
German, " everything in the universe has been 
caused by something else, and so on, ad infini- 
tum^ what we finally reach is not the conception 
of a Cause of which the Cosmos is an effect, but 
of a Substance of which individual cosmical phe- 
nomena are but the accidents. We reach not a 
deity ^ but a self-centred Cosmos." 



326 Through Borne On, 



EXCLUSIVE SALVATION. 



I HAD a talk last nisrlit with "W"- 



on Exclusive Salvation. Like many other Cath- 
olics, he thinks it reconcilable with the faith of 
the Church to believe in the salvation of Protest- 
ants. Yet he seems to hold that atheists must 
be damned. Now if he had any friends among 
atheists, as he has among Protestants, his bene- 
volence, and unconsciously his sense of justice, 
would, I have no doubt, cause him to adulterate 
his creed with a yet larger mingling of humanity, 
BO as to admit atheists themselves within the pale 
of a possible salvation. He knows many Protest- 
ants who are obviously as upright and deserving 
as the best of his Catholic acquaintances; his 
instinct of right, as well as his benevolence, for- 
bids him to believe that these good Protestants 
will be lost forever because they have not the 
Catholic faith ; and so he takes refuge in the 
flimsy notion, only just short of formal heresy, 
that there may be sincere Protestants who are 
invincibly ignorant of the true faith, and who 
would gladly embrace it if they could know it ; 



Through Borne, On, 327 

and who consequently may be saved withoi 
having actually held it in this world. It ma} 
well be doubted that this notion, which is very 
popular with American Catholics at the present 
day, has ever been seriously entertained for 
themselves by any considerable number of sound 
Catholic divines. That multitudes of the laity 
comfort their hearts with it, and fondly conceit 
that they have by means of it purged their doc- 
trine of imcharitableness, there can be no doubt 
whatever. But in a philosophic view, when the 
intellect is not overbalanced by the moral senti- 
ments or the feelings, the fallacy of the notion, 
from the stand-point of Catholic doctrine, is 
the clearest thing possible. In the first place, it 
is a great mistake to suppose, as many do, that 
the Church teaches this notion. The Church 
teaches no such thing. She declares explicitly 
that out of her pale is no salvation. That she 
permits such of her children as can avail them- 
selves of the comfort of this specious notion of 
exceptional salvation to do so ; that individuals 
among her clergy may without public rebuke 
preach and publish it as confidently as if it were 
Catholic doctrine ; is very true. The Church is 
wise in her day and generation. She is aware 
that the speculation in question tends to soothe 
anxious minds within the fold, and to conciliate 
outsiders. So, never committing herself to it, 



328 Through Eome On. 

she tolerates it and lets it be. This is very dif- 
ferent from affirming it. If there were a similar 
usefulness in believing that two and two make 
live, or that of contraries both may be true, she 
would display a like complaisance in permitting 
it to her children ; for she is the guardian only 
of the faith, and not of logic or mathematics. 
He is a poor reason er who, accepting the Cath- 
olic doctrine, holds the salvation of Protestants ; 
but his error is not immediately an error against 
faith, and so the Church is not called upon to 
condemn it. This, liowever, is certain : it is not 
lier teaching. In the second place, the notion 
is, in itself considered, a very flimsy conceit, as 
I have before intimated. I risk nothing in assert- 
ing that a Protestant invincibly ignorant of the 
Catholic religion is an impossible abstraction. 
Such a being may be dreamed of, may be imag- 
ined by a tender-hearted Catholic, but bas no ex- 
istence in the world of realities. The most 
ignorant know or may know this religion which 
the Church declares to be "before all things 
necessary to salvation." It is diffused through- 
out the world, preached and known everywhere; . 
and if at the present day any man or woman of 
ordinary intelligence rejects it, the fact of such 
rejection is, according to the most approved the- 
ologians, evidence in the particular case that the 
soul is not lit for the grace of faith, and so not 



Through Rome On. 329 

fit for heaven. It is of inspiration, that they that 
seek shall find ; and St. Liguori, a standard au- 
thority, declares that if the heretic would seek it, 
'' God would without doubt pour upon him His 
light concerning the true religion {Deus^ absque 
dubio, infunderet in ilium lumen suum de vera 
religione\P Moreover: it has been constantly- 
held in the Catholic Church, that salvation is 
extremely difficult of attainment by Christians in 
possession of all the helps and means of grace 
afforded by the sacramental institutions and of- 
fices of their religion. The infallible word itself 
makes the fearful revelation that of the many 
that are called, few are chosen. St. Kemigius 
expressly says, that few adult Christians are 
saved. Now if salvation is so doubtful and rare 
in the church, and with all the precious helps 
that God himself lias supernaturally provided, 
what must it be out of the fold, and without 
those inestimable advantages % Even if the want 
of the true faith could be pardoned to a Protest- 
ant, and his human qualities of honesty and sin- 
cerity be generally accepted in place of the super- 
natural life the Catholic is required to live, is it 
conceivable that he should escape those mortal 
sins which, without the want of the faitli, hinder 
and preclude salvation among Catholics ? If the 
Catholic can hardly by possibility escape damna- 
tion, is it not in the nature of a moral certainty 



330 Through Rome On. 

that the Protestant must be lost ? The Protest- 
ant who should be saved would have been an an- 
gelic being ; and that God should have withheld 
from this willing and immaculate soul the grace 
of the true faith, and suffered all its gooduess to 
redound to the credit of heresy and human na- 
ture, is surely not quite in accordance with what 
the Church unequivocally teaches and Catholics 
are bound to believe. And what force or mean- 
ing is there in the unvarying declaration of the 
Church that her faith is necessary to salvation, 
if men may be saved through their sincerity and 
honesty without it ? And wlierein lies the in- 
comparable excellence of being a Catholic, if hu- 
man virtue outside of the church is so efficacious ? 

W S is obliged to hold the necessity of 

baptism, and that the unbaptised Protestant is 
hopelessly excluded from heaven : but if baptism 
is essential, wh^^ not the faith % If it is not in- 
consistent with the Divine attributes to exclude 
a man from above for what would appear to us 
the accident of his being unbaptised, why should 
it bo inconsistent with those attributes to exclude 
him for the want of the true faith ? Ah ! my 
amiable friend is not aware of the real difficulty 
in the case ; and I could do no more than hint it 
to him in our conversation, for fear of bringing 
a wasp's nest about my ears. No mind that has 
a fair proportion of both intelligence and bene- 



Through Borne On. 331 

volence can accept in all its monstrous fulness the 
doctrine of Everlasting Damnation. If this doc- 
trine as held among Protestants could be true, 
there would be no incredibleness or absurdity in 
any part of the Catholic system ; no more in Ex- 
clusive Salvation than in any other article ; for 
then our healthy instincts of right and wrong, 
truth and falsehood, would not be trustworthy : 
reason might be unreason, love hate, and " mys- 
tery" a cover for the wildest moral perversions. 
The way that men deal with it manifests what it 
is. Other dogmas that are simply absurd are 
swallowed without difficulty ; but to get this 
down, we are obliged to modify it for ourselves, 
accepting it generally in a technical sense, but 
making it of no effect in familiar cases. The 
Protestant believes in the damnation of strangers, 
but not of his acquaintances : the Catholic bows 
to the Church's dictum that there is no salvation 
for heretics ; but makes an exception in favour 
of his own comrades and friends, whom he sup- 
poses to be "invincibly ignorant," never mind 
how intelligent and thoughtful they are. Un- 
fortunately for my peace of mind, at one time, I 
could not help seeing that such a course is only 
an evasion, a begging of the question, a blinking 
of the true issue from beo^inninp; to end. It was 
obvious to me as a Catholic, I. That the Church 
does not assert the existence of any single case of 



332 Through Rome On. 

"invincible ignorance" of the true faith, past, 
present, or to come : 11. That she is very far 
from saying that such "invincible ignorance", if 
there were any such case, would enable a man 
to get to heaven ; since she assures us that mul- 
titudes in her bosom are every day losing their 
souls through other causes than the rejection of 
the faith ; and since, according to the uncensured 
opinion of some of her ablest theologians, this 
very ignorance might be imputed to men for sin 
by God who sent Pharaoh's hardness of heart,^ 
and whom the scripture speaks of as sending in 
other cases "strong delusion" among men, "that 
they might be damned."^ In fine, I perceived 
and felt, that upon Catholic (I may add, and 
Evangelical) principles, the prospect of a future 
life is replete with a horrible uncertainty ; that 
salvation is most truly a subject for fear and 
trembling, as the Apostle describes it f and this, 
whether we believe in the necessary condemna- 
tion of heretics or not. It was in vain that I said 
to myself that it was my sole concern to secure 
my own salvation, and that I should leave all 
such inscrutable matters alone. I was a man, I 
must take my lot with my brethren ; and indeed, 
if they were lost with all the goodness I knew 
them to possess, why not I too — why not anything ? 

1 Ex. xiv. 4, 8, 17. 2 II Tliess. ii. 11, 13. ^ p^i. n. 12. 



Through Borne On. 333 



THE CHRISTIAK CONTROVERSY. 

[TMs Essay appeared, witli many misprints, in The Radical of 
October 18T1.] 

XJndeklying every religion that has set up a 
cultus or asserted an authority among men, may 
be found the postulate of a great Will-Power 
outside of and dominating nature; and, growing 
out of this, the further assumption of an Infallible 
Oracle on earth to teach men religious truth. 

Until man obtains a true perception of the 
limit of his own faculties, he naturally strains 
after the impossible, in speculation as in action. 
To the early man, with unchastened blood, slen- 
der experience, and no science, such a perception 
was clearly out of the question ; and with us who 
live to-day, heirs of all the ages, the application 
of it as a curb for the headstrong steed Imagina- 
tion remains a most difficult and doubtful per- 
formance. It is no wonder then if, not content 
with learning the secrets of earth and stars, and 
bringing the speech of day and the wisdom of 
night to bear more and more on the natural phe- 
nomena which are his only material of knowl- 



33^ Through Rome On. 

edge, man still aims to overtop tlio universe, 
whose " flaming wall " serves but to vex his spirit 
with a sense of restraint. The cognoscible, 
with all its breadth and grandeur, is too small a 
realm to hold him in. Above and beyond, he 
discerns an ineffable glory, wherein his own attri- 
butes are enthroned in awful majesty. Then 
man adores his God, the Creator of the universe ; 
and as, for man, there could be no God without 
man himself, so by a necessary process human 
destiny becomes a prime concern of the Divine 
activity. Though unconscious of the identity of 
subject and object, man is not able to separate 
them in such a way as to conceive of God as in- 
different to humanity. God cares for what man 
thinks and does and says; and man likewise is 
interested in the thought and action of Deity, 
and expects some word to come down to him 
concerning them. And so, the w^ord of God 
descends from the skies, and man has a super- 
natural revelation. 

Now to be good and to do good is the con- 
scious duty of man by virtue of his original con- 
stitution, which can dispense with any external 
revelation so far as that is concerned. The busi- 
ness of revelation is to enlighten man as to some- 
thing over and above goodness, to add some 
knowledge of supersensible facts and relations to 
the teachings of his own nature. This something 



Through Home On. 335 

which is more than goodness, this knowledge 
which could not be reached by unassisted human 
nature, is to be propounded by oracular authority 
and received by faith supplanting reason. 

These prolegomena furnish us with a begin- 
ning for the Natural History of Religion,— a 
work beyond the ambition of the pen which is 
here directed to the much humbler task of setting 
forth a few reflections on some of those unfold- 
ings of the religious principle with which we are 
most familiar, and of pointing out how the laws 
of mind appear and reappear amid the varying 
lights and shadows which a view of Christianity 
presents. There has probably never been any 
other religion presenting so admirable a com- 
bination of spirituality and carnality as this 
Christianity of ours. To this cause chiefly may 
be attributed its great success in the world. 
The most characteristic working of the Christian 
idea is displayed in Roman Catholicism. It tol- 
erates no idolatry besides its own. It hates gross 
paganism and wars against it to the death. But 
it loves not that lofty flight of the soul in which, 
soaring away from all idols, she loses herself in 
the supernal spheres. The unreligious spiritual- 
ist,* with a reverence so profound that he cannot 

' The word spintualist is used here not in the present 
popular sense of spiritist, or ghost-hunter, but in the legi- 
timate sense in which it is the correlative of materialist. 



336 Through Rome On. 

call God a person; the rationalist, who, not re- 
jecting the personality, denies the alleged con- 
versations of Deity with man ; the Unitarian, 
who, admitting personal divine communications, 
shrinks from incarnating the Supreme; the Evan- 
gelical Protestant, who adores not only a person 
but a man : these are all anathema to the Cath- 
olic ; whose more religious faith sees the personal 
Father in heaven, converses with the God-man 
Christ on earth, and swallows the same being in 
the sacrament of the altar. 

Christians have not been behind other reli- 
gionists in asserting an Oracle or teacher of reve- 
lation among men. Their conflicting theories on 
this subject are well worthy of an attentive ex- 
amination from our present point of view. They 
are, briefly, three in number ; for there is proba- 
bly no Christian modification of the Rule of 
Faith which may not be brought under one or 
another of the following divisions : first. Private 
s Inspiration ; second, the Bible interpreted by 
the judgment of each man for himself; third, a 
Seer or Corporation, supernaturally commis- 
sioned and illuminated to be the living Teacher 
of all. Had Heaven indeed made a "revela- 
tion " to man, it would of course have been the 
same as to the same matters to all for whom it 
was intended. One part of it could not have 
been in opposition to another part ; for of con- 



TJiroxigK Rome On. 337 

tradlctions only one can possibly be true, and 
truth is of the essence of a di\dne revelation. 
Again : such a revelation must have been adapt- 
ed, in itself and in the mode of its delivery, to 
the capacity of all to whom it was addressed. 
An inaudible or unintelligible " word," whether 
of God or man, can be no " revelation " at all. 
The divine message must have been spoken 
within men individually, or else declared in the 
plainest terms to the multitude by external com- 
munication adapted to the apprehension, the 
grasping power, of all alike. These premises 
have an important bearing on the claims of the 
several theories among Christians as to the Rule 
of Faith. 

The first of these theories, private inspiration, 
gives us the sect of Friends or Quakers ; a body 
whose rare honour among Christians it is to be 
free from bloodshed ; who seem nearest of all to 
"the simplicity that is in Christ;" and whose 
virtues deserve that they should always be men- 
tioned with respect. Their doctrine of personal 
illumination will not however stand the test of 
examination. The question is here about an in- 
fallible oracle to teach supernatural doctrine; 
and overwhelming human experience crushes the 
notion that would separate the Spirit of Truth 
into many such oracles in many minds ; which 
notion, besides, must ever lack the argumenta- 



338 Through Rome On. 

tive basis of common ground for an appeal. 
Quakers and others who hold this theory divide 
in their doctrines as well as those Christians who 
proclaim an external authority. The second 
theory is asserted for the great body of Protest- 
ants who hold to the Infallible Oracle. The 
Bible is given by inspiration of God, and is there- 
fore infallibly true in all its teachings, whatever 
they conflict with. The divine revelation is to 
be got by searching its pages, the words of which 
are to be interpreted by each mind for itself. 
This is the theory of Episcopalians, Presbyteri- 
ans, Baptists, Methodists, and all besides who 
are called Evangelical Protestants. It is the 
theory also of Universalists, and is accepted by 
Unitarians of the right wing. We say it is the 
theory of these Christians : in practice, however, 
it breaks down from the very beginning. It is 
not tenable for a moment even, save on the huge 
assumption that a certain book now in our pos- 
session, which we call the Bible, is a literal com- 
munication from God ; and taking this assump- 
tion for granted, it is impossible to avoid seeing 
the pains which Protestants take to prevent the 
private interpretation of the Bible from being 
really the Rule of Faith as they say it is. Most 
of us know something of the machinery of Sun- 
day-schools, and of the sectarian drilling that is 
in vogue in the families of Protestants who are 



Through Borne On. 339 

in earnest about their religion. The child of 
Evangelical parents learns the Catechism, not 
the Bible. He is instructed, not by the word of 
God, but by the word of man ; — the word of his 
elders at home, of his Sunday-school teacher, of 
the pastor of his church. He reads the Bible no 
doubt ; but it is with the note and comment of 
his teachers ; and he is not allowed to find in the 
sacred text any doctrine different from what they 
tell him it contains. They have their own opin- 
ions on the subject ; they embody those opinions 
in what they consider a digest of Bible doctrine ; 
and in this digest, the Catechism, they press and 
mould the child's pliant mind into a certain shape 
of doctrine, trusting that when he is old he will 
not depart from it. And very commonly he can- 
not depart from it at mature age, any more than 
Chinese ladies can recover the right shape and 
power of their feet which have been distorted in 
their infancy. How idle it is to talk of the Bible 
as the Bule of Faith ! This book could not have 
been put into the hands of the people before the 
two inventions of paper and printing. For many 
centuries, only a few could possibly read it, fewer 
still possibly understand it. There had to be 
spiritual teachers standing between the people 
and the alleged revelation, to tell the former 
what the latter is. And how much better off are 
we in this matter to-day ? Are not our religions 



340 Through Rome On. 

still made for us by our fallible fellow-men, and 
put on us witli our other baby-clothes when we 
have no choice in the matter ? Who would ever 
conceive of an obligation to keep Sunday, the 
first day of the week, as a religious holiday, if he 
took his Christianity from the Bible ? And how 
should we ever know which of the ancient writ- 
ings we are to call sacred, and which profane, if 
the infallible Catholic Church, or the fallible 
Protestant Church, did not kindly save us the 
trouble of deciding for ourselves by forestalling 
the question with its ijpse dixit f 

This brings us to the third theory of the Rule 
of Faith, viz., a Seer or Corporation, supernatu- 
rally illuminated and commissioned to be the Liv- 
ing Teacher of all. Clearly, man's only monitor 
within is conscience; and conscience, though 
competent to pronounce against the divinity of a 
given proposition falling within the sphere of 
morals, is without any miraculous touchstone to 
try doctrines in metaphysics. If there be an in- 
fallible oracle on earth to teach supernatural 
doctrine, it must be external to man who is to be 
taught. We have seen that the Bible is not and 
cannot be such a teacher. It cannot establish its 
own claim to inspiration and authority; it has 
no voice of its own, but another must speak for 
it if it is to be heard ; and by the necessity of the 
case, when it is set up as an oracle, the attempt 



Through Rome On. 341 

results inevitably in the substitution of some liv- 
ing authority instead of it, as the real teacher. 
An immediate book revelation supposes a pasi- 
graphy and universal enlightenment ; neither of 
which has ever been enjoyed by our race. More 
than this, the pasigraphy would have to be free 
from ambiguity and change, and the enlighten- 
ment preternatural to say the least; for other- 
wise the qualities of clearness, adaptedness, and 
certainty, which we have found to be necessary 
characteristics of the divine revelation, would be 
absent. The Oracle must be accessible to all, 
and its dixvinity must be a fact clearly attested to 
all. These conditions are obviously not fulfilled 
in the Bible. The original writings of which the 
several parts of our Bible purport to be copies 
have long been out of existence. The first copies 
are also lost. The languages of the primitive 
documents are absolutely sealed to the vast pro- 
portion of Christians, and in many of their idioms 
and connexions are full of obscurity to our most 
accomplished scholars. What remain to us are 
imperfect transcripts by very questionable hands, 
and translations of these copies of copies, in 
which nothing short of infallibility can distin- 
guish between the genuine text and the glosses 
of rabbinical and monkish annotators which are 
mingled with it. The Scriptures refer in dififer- 
ent places to other writings as of similar value 



342 Through Rome On. 

and authority : what has become of them ? Can 
the Word of God pass away and be lost ? We 
have them not ; and there are various gospels 
and epistles which we might bind up with those 
we have in the Bible, since they are of like char- 
acter and pretensions, but which we slight as 
spurious or doubtful, because certain divines have 
called them so : and we receive our Bible, at 
last, on the authority of these confessedly fallible 
divines and their disciples; thus making them, 
instead of God, the vouchers for the Oracle. It 
is an indisputable fact, moreover, that these guar- 
antors not only may err, but do err, in what 
they give us under the name of The Bible. In 
considering what writings they shall include un- 
der this head, and what reject, they are evidently 
only a body of debaters, whose decision, in the 
highest view we can take of it, can give us no 
more than a probability ; and in making their 
rendering of the writings into the vernacular 
tongue, we find them dividing on several con- 
flicting versions ; the one most widely accepted 
among Protestants in Great Britain and America, 
King James's Bible, as it is called, being proved 
to contain numerous and glaring errors. There 
is, then, no infallible Bible in existence; though 
there are many erring bibles, which are regarded 
by Christians as having come from heaven some- 
how, as the shields in the Koman temple were 



Through Borne On. 343 

regarded by the people as having fallen from the 
skies. It is considered very wicked to question 
the divinity of these bibles before the pubhc; 
and thus rendered inviolable, they lie like Grand 
Lamas in households and churches, and form a 
shibboleth for pious lips abroad. But logically 
and justly, they are no Rule at all. 

The third theory, that of the Seer or Corpo- 
ration, is much superior, in jpriina facie plausi- 
bleness at least, to the others. Any system that 
is to-be more than inert material, any that is to 
exert a didactic sanction of its own, must appeal 
to the principle of personal authority ; and there 
is, correspondent to this need, a general tendency 
in men's minds to accept a personal standard, 
to follow leaders, to believe in some one here or 
there as possessing an unction which raises him 
above the rest and calls for homage and for faith. 
It is written of the earliest Christians, the imme- 
diate followers of Jesus himself, that this senti- 
ment of dependence on him, their chosen master, 
was expressed by one of them, Peter, in the 
question and affirmation, — " Lord, to whom shall 
we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life !" 
"Whatever the theory of an organised philosophy 
or religion, its authority is always, for the great 
body of its adherents, of the personal kind. This 
is openly confessed when the crowd follows one 
man as a prophet. It is unconsciously manifest- 



344 Through Rome On. 

ed, as we have seen in considering the Bible 
question, wlien men gravitate from an ideal 
standard to a real dependence on their fellow- 
men as the keepers, witnesses, and expounders 
of a revelation. Whatever may be fancied or 
asserted on the subject, therefore, the real rule of 
faith for Christians, as for all other active reli- 
gionists, is personal teaching, embodying some 
modification or other of the hierarchal principle : 
from which it follows, that the theory of the Seer 
or Corporation is the most logical and consistent 
of the three views of the Rule of Faith which 
we have brought together for discussion in this 
paper. 

There are no individual claims in our day 
that need detain us long from an examination of 
the corporate form of the Oracle. The greatest 
of seers in modern times— Swedenborg— has been 
dead a hundred years. He has no successor 
among us, though the age spawns miracle- 
workers and " mediums " with a fecundity that 
is truly startling. The Book of Mormon has 
been " found," like the Book of the Law of the 
Old Testament (II Chron. xxxiv. 14); and the 
system to which it belongs has had its temple, 
its prophets, and its fresh revelations, for years; 
but our readers will, we are sure, excuse us from 
dwelling on its pretensions here. Such person- 
ages as A. J. Davis and T. L. Harris have their 



Through Home On. 345 

following certainly ; but tliey do not correspond 
to what we are looking into under the designa- 
tion of the Hule of Faith ; and the lesser lights 
of Spiritism can rise no nearer to the level of our 
inquiry than the divining damsel whose trade 
Paul spoilt in his visit to Philippi. The theory 
of the Oracle is a supernaturalist theory; and 
any view of it which, does not rise above nature, 
or which fails to connect it with Jesus Christ, is 
excluded from the category within which we are 
to look for the Christian Rule of Faith. The 
path which we have followed from the outset 
brings us now at last to the conception of a di- 
vine Corporation as a depositary and interpreter 
of the divine revelation. This Corporation is 
called in Christian language the Church : and if 
the reader has carefully held to the thread of our 
argument from the beginning, he is by this time 
prepared to see that the Church is the logical 
sequel of the assertion that there is on earth an 
Infallible Oracle to teach men Christian truth. 
(The expression " Christian truth" is here used, 
as the catena from Christ was spoken of a little 
way back, because we are in this essay confined 
to the Christian phases of religious develop- 
ment.) And now, w^hat is the Church, in the 
sense of our inquiry ? Not a mere society of 
believers, banded together for sympathy, con- 
venience, and brotherly edification. Not a tri- 



34:6 Through Royne On. 

bunal of elders, to watch over morals and strive 
prayerfully for the preservation of what they take 
to be sound doctrine. I^ot even a bench of 
bishops in lawn sleeves, through whose consecra- 
ted hands may be supposed to descend a mysteri- 
ous power of succession. Any one of these 
bodies may be a very respectable church; but 
The Chuech is different from and transcends 
them all. 

Supernaturalist Christianity demands, in the 
first place, a divine miraculousness in Jesus 
Christ, as the author and finisher of the faith; 
and then, as Jesus was not to survive his genera- 
tion on earth, a perpetuation and assurance of 
his teaching by means of an Oracle connected 
with him by identity of doctrine at least, and 
founded either by him or by God from whom he 
came. We have found the Church to be the 
necessary embodiment of the oracular principle 
at the root of Christianity. That this Corpora- 
tion, the Church, must possess the discriminating 
function of infallibility in order to discern and 
set forth the supernatural revelation, is one of 
the necessities of the case. The Oracle, to teach 
us what we are to believe, must have a voice or 
organ ; and this voice or organ must be oracular, 
that is, of the nature of the Oracle: in other 
words, it must possess an inherent divinity to 
secure it against any error in the doctrine it is 



Through Borne On, 347 

appointed to communicate to us from the super- 
natural source. To say that it has such divinity 
is to say that, as a doctrinal teacher, it is infal- 
lible. Now then for the Infallible Church. As 
there are many bibles, so there are many churches 
also ; but among the latter, one towers so high 
above all the rest, and is so exclusively in pos- 
session of certain attributes which are essential 
to the constitution of the spiritual Teacher we 
are in search of^ that we are compelled to the 
conclusion that if this one is not the Infallible 
Church, a fortiori no other is. This conspicu- 
ous Church of churches, on the maintenance of 
whose claims to be the divinely-sent Teacher of 
the nations the whole fabric of the Infallible 
Oracle depends, is the Latin communion with 
the Pope at its head, whose last great Council 
has just been held at Home. No other Christian 
body occupies the necessary place in history. 
What is called Modern History dates from Jesus 
Christ. As far back as its annals are clear, this 
great Corporation stands out in bold relief as the 
one central spiritual authority of Christendom; 
its visible head, the Pope, acting as the repre- 
sentative of Jesus Christ and recognised as such 
by potentates and peoples and the very heathen 
themselves. It is impossible to turn away from 
this city upon a mountain, with all nations flow- 
ing unto it, and accept any one of the recalcitrat- 



34:8 Through Borne On. 

ing bodies of Christians for the Infallible-teaching 
Church ; and to speak of them as being in their 
severalty " parts of the one Church," is an un- 
worthy evasion of the argument ; for there can 
be DO conflicting parts of the one doctrinal au- 
thority that is here in question. History shows 
clearly the beginning of each of the would-be 
rival communions, unless of one or two Oriental 
sects whose claims to be the Infallible Teacher 
it would be a waste of time here to plead against; 
and when we have dated each, we find the Ko- 
man Catholic establishment existing before it, 
and looming back on those dim ages wherein 
"primitive Christianity" plays at hide-and-seek 
with the puzzled learning and research of our 
nineteenth century. This, cutting off as it does 
both corporate and doctrinal succession from 
Christ, is conclusive, from the point of view of 
the Infallible Corporation, against all the churches 
besides Roman Catholicism, which the editor of 
the Index has with great propriety called " Chris- 
tianity in its m-ost highly developed and perfect 
form." It is here to be observed, however, that 
only in Ultramontane Catholicism is this true 
development of the root-principle of Christianity 
to be found consistently carried out. Gallican- 
ism is but a shilly-shally Protestantism ; and so- 
called Liberal Catholics are half-heretics, whether 
they know it or not. As well take the motley 



Through Borne On, 349 

and truncated Catholicism imagined by Mr. 
Baring-Gould for the embodied form of the 
Oracle, as the free-and-easy plan of the unclois- 
tered monk Hyacinthe, or the less noisy syncre- 
tism of many amiable Catholics in our country, 
whose theory of their Church gives us an evisce- 
rated phantom stuffed with human sympathy and 
republican principles. The creed of Pius lY., 
the syllabus of the reigning pontiff, Pius IX., 
and the decisions of the Yatican Council that has 
been brought to an untimely adjom-nment by 
Yictor Emanuel's invasion, present the genuine 
character and claims of the Infallible Teacher. 
The true Catholic and logical Christian lives by 
faith ; and the life of faith is distinct from and 
opposed to the life of sense and reason. Within 
the sphere of faith, private judgment has no 
privilege or place. Will and understanding are 
subjected together to the yoke of spiritual obedi- 
ence. Self-abnegation and submission to one's 
superior, though not exacted so constantly and 
severely in minute particulars, is as clearly the 
duty of secular Christians as of monks and nuns 
themselves. What if it be emasculating and be- 
set with perils in a temporal point of view ? The 
business of man enlightened by revelation is to 
glorify God and save his own soul. Humility, 
even to the point of stultification, is the appointed 
way. We are to become little children, fools, 



350 Through Borne On, 

emmchs, for the kiDgdom of heaven's sake. So 
says Christ, so says the Church. If this way of 
salvation be of God, it must come out right after 
all. So there should be no fear, on Christian 
premises, in adopting the Jesuit's maxim and 
being jperinde ac cadaver in the hands of our 
superiors, especially of our spiritual superiors, 
the confessor, the bishop, above all the Pope, 
Christ's viceroy, the necessary visible head of 
the divine Corporation. Jealousy or suspicion 
of the Pope is not consistent with a hearty faith 
in the Infallible Oracle; because without the 
Pope the effective realisation of the Oracle's pur- 
pose is im])Ossible. If we believe that God has 
instituted the Oracle, w^e must believe also that 
he can take care of his own without let or hin- 
drance from human infirmity. And so, on Chris- 
tian principles, faith in the Church and the Pope 
is at last faith in God himself. 

Having thus resolved Christianity into the 
Papal system, we have arrived at the Christian 
result of the two-fold postulate from which all 
religions spring. We have in the early part of 
our remarks indicated the natural origin of the 
postulate itself. Starting from the point which 
it supplies, men have stocked the earth with or- 
thodoxies and heresies, each a psychological 
study in itself, if one might linger by the way ; 
and all illustrating that important law of diver- 



Through Rome On, 351 

eity which enters into the constitution of the 
human mind as manifestly as it is contained in 
all the unfoldings of nature besides. The here- 
sies are detached shoots from the regular growth : 
the one towering Orthodoxy is the accomplished 
fact of Christianity. We are profoundly im- 
pressed with the truth, that there is no tenable 
middle ground between the acceptance of the 
Homan Catholic religion in its fulness and the 
rejection of Christianity as a supernatural dog- 
matic system altogether. We wish to put on 
record our unequivocal protest against the hier- 
archal principle, and to help, as well as we may, 
to direct attention to the real battle-ground where 
Free Thought is to win its crowning victory at 
last. A certain importance yet remains to Pro- 
testant dogmatics from the relation they bear to 
the moulding and environment of many minds ; 
but dialectically considered, they are very flimsy 
and worthless. The argument is between the 
Papal Church and human reason ; and here the 
progress of physical and moral science leaves no 
room for doubt as to the issue of the controversy. 
There is indeed a revelation, though it falls in 
the natural order ; and this true gospel has long 
been undermining the foundations of dogmatic 
religion. The dogmas have been pruned, twisted, 
recast ; and with every change have lost some- 
thing of their grappling power. Augustine and 



352 Through Rome On. 

Aquinas, Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, slumber 
on the back shelves : their voices are no longer 
heard in public. Men's faith in the Kingdom of 
Satan is failing every day. " Salvation " is losing 
its technical sense; and our generation is so 
cooled dov^n from the fervour and vision of the 
past as to question if a Roman execution could 
open heaven any more than a Romish mass. 
Protestants and Catholics alike have grown sick 
of the smell of brimstone, and ashamed to carry 
it away from home in their garments. In the 
last ten years, a powerful thinker and writer in 
the bosom of the Catholic Church has published, 
without condemnation, the opinion that the doc- 
trine of Eternal Torments is not a part of the 
positive teaching of the Church.^ Happy change ! 
when men dare no longer proclaim their God to 
be a Devil. 

1 See BrownsoTi's Beview^ July 1861, Art. m. 



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